Seeing Sideways: A Memoir Of Music And Motherhood

★★★★ Kristin Hersh JAWBONE. £14.95

Throwing Muses linchpin’s sequel to teenage-centred Paradoxical Undressing.

Alongside band and solo records, and three books, Hersh has given birth to four sons. The first, Doony, preceded Throwing Muses’ 1986 debut by a year. Her songs were already barbed and anxious, and losing custody of her son in 1990 (Doony’s dad cited Hersh’s mental fragility and itinerant lifestyle) triggered PTSD. While raising (and home-schooling) Ryder, Wyatt and Bodhi with their dad, she battles major labels (“Zombie

Satan”) and fate, as their home is lost in a flood, Hersh almost drowns and Wyatt almost dies. Seeing Sideways is an acutely tense tale but Hersh has always alchemised pain into beauty. Her prose resembles lyrics (“Desert wind harmonica’d through conifers and a bottle clanked with it”) and her maternal philosophy is touching (“Fear? Maybe leave it as the question mark it will be when you step over it”). For Hersh, music and motherhood go together: “two engaging ways to disappear behind beautiful, blooming things.”