Quotes
“Sean Madigan Hoen is not merely an immensely gifted
writer but also a seeker—of redemption, of clarity, of hard family history.
There are moments of Songs Only You Know that seem almost too painful to
bear—but only almost. What carries the reader through is both the naked beauty
of the prose and the deep human certainty that it is always better to face the
truth than to flinch away from it. No flinching here. I admired every page of
it.” Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Songs Only You
Know is
a truly moving book, full of pain, longing, strangeness, and even grim comedy,
and one of its greatest triumphs is the way Hoen describes a certain creative
intensity—youthful, monstrous, fragile—that is both life-giving and dangerous,
especially in troubled times. Maybe everybody has a song, but Hoen sings his
with fresh phrasing and genuine feeling.” Sam Lipsyte, New York Times bestselling author
“I don’t know anyone who has described that
terrible yearning for ecstasy and immolation through music as lucidly as Sean
Madigan Hoen in Songs Only You Know. Only a thorough initiate of the
scene who also had some genius with language could summon the demotic yet
electric voice for the job. If there is ruefulness, now, for the way he treated
his body, his girlfriends, and his family, he wisely reprises in his book, in
neon detail, the fever that once placed him in the same drunken boat with Iggy
Pop, Rimbaud, and Artaud.” Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award–winning author
“Here’s what you get when you mix Nick Flynn
with Karl Ove Knausgaard: a book of almost spooky clarity and relentless
compassion. I bet when Songs Only You Know gets translated to Norwegian
they’ll call it My Struggle (With Drugs and Rock-n-Roll). Which
would kind of get it, and kind of wouldn’t. Because it’s also universal, and
ridiculously readable, and Hoen has, in this memoir, brought his life pinned
and wriggling to page, and you can’t help but be moved by it, and even find
yourself changed.” Darin Strauss, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author
“In his rousing debut memoir, punk-rocker Hoen
plunges into the chaotic family life that led him to substance abuse and
the aggressive musical style that saved him…Astute and intensely self-aware, Hoen
writes furious prose with a storyteller’s eye for detail…There’s no
question that Hoen is a gifted, impassioned writer with a deep
understanding of longing and pain.” Booklist
“Perceptive, sprawling memoir of a young man’s escape from cascading family tragedies into the noise-punk underground…A dark, knowing look at addiction, rock ’n’ roll, and the ties that bind.” Kirkus Reviews
“Sean Madigan Hoen puts raw need indelibly on
the page—the need for family, for belonging, for alcohol and drugs, and for a
music that will burn all those things away (and if the music fails, try more
alcohol and drugs). Hoen’s younger self thinks, ‘To achieve self-invention, you
first evacuate the truest parts of yourself,’ not quite knowing yet that the
sort of evacuation he craves is only ever temporary: the check always comes
due. This moving, often brutal memoir records Hoen’s long journey back toward
the truth.” Bill Clegg, author of Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man
“It's an odd feeling to have, to not want a book
to end when it covers so many miserable and sometimes manic moments in a life,
but that’s how I felt reading this fantastic, honest, unsentimental, and
finally generous-hearted book.” Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
“Sean
Madigan Hoen offers the best things a writer can offer a reader: the big heart,
the big hurts, the big bad news about the impermanence of life’s gig.” Kyle Minor, author of Praying Drunk
“Sean Hoen has written a wise and moving memoir
about anger, rock music, and the endurance of familial love. For Hoen the
ultimate redemption is rendering honestly the hard facts of his own
transgression, while never losing track of the beauty and kindness that are
also, thank goodness, ineradicable aspects of human existence.” Stephen O’Connor, author of Here Comes Another Lesson
