Carrie Brownstein performs the audiobook version of her memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, and even performs a short part of one of the first songs she wrote. She has a great speaking voice, familiar from her work on Portlandia or NPR Music. This is one of the best audiobook performances of an autobiographical work. The book tells of her early life, her teen years, and the early life of her band Sleater Kinney. It goes up to 2013 when the band went on hiatus, with almost nothing about Portlandia or the making of their most recent album, No Cities to Love. Although Brownstein mentions some of the people she has kissed, and her relationship with Corin Tucker, she says very little about her romantic life. She mostly writes about bands, growing up listening to music, going to shows, being a performer, and the first seven albums of Sleater Kinney. So Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is mostly for fans of the band, but it also gives a strong sense of the excitement of growing up at the start of the Riot Grrl movement in the northwest US.

Brownstein starts off her memoir with the episode that led to the hiatus of her band, when they were on tour in Europe and she had shingles. This caused tension among the band members and Brownstein was deeply frustrated and unhappy. Shockingly, she started punching herself in the face. She also mentions her own hypochondria and anxieties. There was the unhappiness of her family when she was young, when her mother suffered from anorexia. Then her parents split up and her father announced in his fifties that he was gay. Brownstein also emphasizes her own occasional bad attitude, such as the time when she acted like a spoiled rock star when the band was discussing a possible deal with Matador Records. Despite all this, she comes across as level headed and thoughtful, and her quirks all charming. Her self-deprecation, qualified openness and her enthusiasm for the music make for a winning combination. Fans of Sleater Kinney will especially enjoy Brownstein’s anecdotes about the making of their albums and the experience of growing success, starting from some grimy beginnings.

 © 2016 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York