LIFE AND HOW TO LIVE IT

Holesworth recalls growing up in a troubled Philadelphia family in this memoir.

“It was the worst of times; it was the even worst of times,” the author writes in the book’s opening lines, adding, “I am a good example of why not everyone should have a kid.” Indeed, in this memoir, which traces the first 17 years of his life, his parents loom large. He grew up in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia in the 1980s and ’90s, which he describes as “a rough, lower class and blue-collar sort of area” with sex workers and drug dealers on every corner. Holesworth’s father was an addict, and his paternal grandfather was a low-level criminal, affiliated with an Irish American gang. His mother, who didn’t finish high school, had a meek demeanor and was a frequent victim of her husband’s emotional abuse, infidelity, and addictions. And although she defied her husband’s Catholic faith by becoming a born-again Christian in the early ’80s, her newfound faith, Holesworth says, contributed to his self-described “shitty” childhood, as she became preoccupied with her children’s exposure to dancing and other aspects of secular pop culture. However, it was music—particularly that of the band R.E.M., whose songs inspired the book’s title and subtitle—where Holesworth found a respite from the traumas of his childhood (which included a sexual assault by a neighborhood girl, detailed in an early chapter). The book effectively doubles as a tribute to the power of music to liberate souls. As the first volume of an anticipated two-part memoir, the work rather abruptly ends at age 17, when the author—fueled by the lyrics of ’80s rock—rejects the sexual mores and faith of his mother and commits himself to entering “the big evil secular world.” However, before its sudden end, the book showcases an emotionally raw prose style, which allows the author to poignantly explore broader concepts related to religion, childhood trauma, and growing up in a post-industrial city in ’80s and ’90s America.

An absorbing and thoughtful, if often disturbing, debut remembrance.