The Skin Above My Knee

by Marcia Butler

The unflinching story of a professional oboist who finds order and beauty in music as her personal life threatens to destroy her.

Music was everything for Marcia Butler. Growing up in an emotionally desolate home with an abusive father and a distant mother, she devoted herself to the discipline and rigor of the oboe, and quickly became a young prodigy on the rise in New York City's competitive music scene.

But haunted by troubling childhood memories while balancing the challenges of a busy life as a working musician, Marcia succumbed to dangerous men, drugs and self-destruction. In her darkest moments, she asked the hardest question of all: Could music truly save her life?

A memoir of startling honesty and subtle, profound beauty, The Skin Above My Knee is the story of a woman finding strength in her creative gifts and artistic destiny. Filled with vivid portraits of 1970's New York City, and fascinating insights into the intensity and precision necessary for a career in professional music, this is more than a narrative of a brilliant musician struggling to make it big in the big city. It is the story of a survivor.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Music, Addiction

261 pages, Hardcover

First published February 21, 2017

About the author

Marcia Butler’s nationally acclaimed memoir, The Skin Above My Knee, was one of the Washington Post’s “Top ten noteworthy moments in classical music in 2017”. Her debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, was hailed by Michael Schaub of NPR: “Surprising and audacious, Pickle’s Progress succeeds because of Butler’s willingness to take risks and her considerable charisma. She’s a gifted storyteller with a uniquely dry sense of humor and a real sympathy for her characters.” And Richard Russo said: "The four main characters in Pickle's Progress seems more alive than most of the people we know in real life because their fears and desires are so nakedly exposed." Her third book, Oslo, Maine, draws on indelible memories of performing for many years at a chamber music festival in central Maine. While there, Marcia came to love the majestic moose who roam at their perpetual peril among the humans. Bethanne Patrick of Literary Hub noted, “The author’s deep compassion for a different species means that you will wonder why more writers don’t choose to include all manner of beasts in their narratives.” In her stunning new novel (5/6/25) Dear Virginia, Wait For Me, Marcia draws a sensitive portrait of a not quite formed, vulnerable yet resilient, young woman who, with the help of her inner voice who she believes is Virginia Woolf, attempts to overcome the psychological damages wrought by her troubled upbringing. Best-selling author, Jonathan Lee, writes: “Her protagonist believes she's being guided by the voice of Virginia Woolf, but it is Butler's voice -- comforting and astute, alive to the music of kindness as well as betrayal -- that holds you to the end.”

Prior to becoming an author, Marcia had several creative careers: professional musician, interior designer, and documentary filmmaker. During her thirty-year musical career, she performed as a principal oboist and soloist on the most renowned of New York and international stages, with many high-profile musicians and orchestras – including pianist Andre Watts and composer/pianist Keith Jarrett. The New York Times hailed her as a “first rate artist”. Her interior design projects have been published in numerous shelter magazines and range up and down the East Coast, from Boston to NYC to Miami. The Creative Imperative, her documentary film exploring the essence of creativity, premiered in 2019 at The New York Society Library and is now available on YouTube.

Marcia’s writing has been published in The Washington Post, Literary Hub, PANK Magazine, Psychology Today, Aspen Ideas Magazine, Catapult, Bio-Stories, Kenyon Review, and others. She was a 2015 recipient of a Writer-in-Residence through Aspen Words and the Catto Shaw Foundation and was a writing fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2018 and 2019. After four decades in New York City, Marcia now calls New Mexico home.

Reviews

[Peebee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir was amazing. Simply amazing. It initially appealed to me because of Butler's background as a professional musician -- an oboe player -- and I was a band geek who learned to play the oboe when it was needed for a solo for a high school concert. I found the music parts fascinating, because it's a world that despite my affinity for music, I didn't know much about. But her raw and real discussion of the rest of her life was just as resonant -- it's not surprising that the perfectionism which allowed her to soar to the top of her profession masked hidden sexual abuse as a child and a tortured relationship with the rest of her family, and led to troubled romantic relationships involving physical abuse and mutual substance abuse. It's a quick, beautiful, haunting read, and if you enjoy memoirs as a genre and/or have any relationship to the world of professional orchestra musicians, I think you will find this as interesting and moving as I did.

[ETA: I try not to read the other reviews before I write mine, but it's noteworthy that of the people giving this book a star rating, 51% gave it 5 stars, which means it has more 5-star ratings than all the other star ratings put together. I'm not alone in my assessment of how good this book is, even though I guess it's kind of a sleeper that hasn't gotten that much buzz yet.]

[Barbara (The Bibliophage) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published at TheBibliophage.com.

I was utterly captivated by Marcia Butler’s memoir, The Skin Above My Knee. As Butler says in a YouTube video, music saved her life. It was the one constant in a world full of discouragement and outright destruction.

Butler discovered music at a young age, and really began to connect when she started to play herself. While she started with the flute, it was the oboe that became her North Star. From the outside, her family looked like a fairly typical middle class family. But the truth was more insidious.

I particularly felt Butler’s pain regarding her relationship with her mother. While her father was more overtly abusive, it was her mother’s distance and failure to ever engage that struck the deepest chord. That primary relationship of mother and daughter is integral to every woman’s life. We often assume that it’s always filled with sweetness and light, support and love. Well, Butler is here to tell us it’s not. And I second that emotion.

After high school, Butler attended music school in Manhattan, navigating the new situation without the slightest parental support. As much as she held the oboe to play, this is when the oboe really starts to hold her up. It becomes her lifeline, the normality in a life of twenty-something exploration and bad decisions.

Those bad decisions start to add up to bad relationships, drinking and drugs without much control. Butler’s story could be the memoir of a lot of folks during the 70s and 80s in New York City. But she has music, with transcendent moments to recharge and ground her. Her music career gives her focus and purpose.

I believe in the power of reinvention. In Butler’s case, the child became the young woman, who then became a full adult. The student became a professional freelancer, who continued to extend her skills to other musical forms. The musician became a writer, and so on. I salute Marcia Butler for her strength and courage to persist and keep reinventing in the face of tremendous odds.

Butler’s book is a dichotomy of cringe-worthy craziness and the healing power of music. She skillfully manages the delicate balance of both sides. As in a music score, there are moments of adagio, moving to allegretto, and even some presto. Butler weaves the stories and various tones together in a way that left me feeling uplifted at the end, despite the darkness of many chapters. This is a fantastic memoir—you won’t be able to stop reading it!

Many thanks to the author for a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

[Meliss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actual rating: 4.5 stars

Wow. This memoir was incredible. I thought I would like it, because I grew up playing music and I understand that world a little bit. But this was SO GOOD and blew my expectations out of the water. It's raw and heart wrenching and poetic. It's only 250-ish pages, but it's so full of tragic wonderfulness that it feels much longer--yet it reads quickly.

Everything I could say about this book can be summed up to this: you should read it, no matter how hard it may be sometimes. It's absolutely worth it.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marcia Butler has written a memoir that reads like a novel. The narrative is structured in a most interesting way with short chapters that mark incredible experiences. Her imagery is art itself and the words flow beautifully. Perhaps the flow has to do with MB's lifelong love and training in music. MB's instrument was primarily the oboe and she played with just about every major orchestra in New York, around the USA and Europe. She also accepted jobs playing in Broadway plays, a gig that most freelance musicians accept to pay the bills. I was enthralled with all the inside views of life as a musician in New York, in venues that over my lifetime I have visited and enjoyed, and I'm sure that on more than one occasion most definitely heard the oboe played by Marcia Butler.

This memoir included MB's personal struggles that made this book all the more dramatic and urgent in the telling. The child lived first in Massachusetts and then Long Island, NY. Her parents were cruel people who abused her with unique and not so unique ways, ones that can destroy the character and soul of even the strongest children. Marcia's sister got out of the house early on and suffered her own kind of hell. Marcia had to wait to until she entered a music conservatory for her freedom. True to the narrative of most abused children, she tried well into her adult life to gain approval and love from her deranged parents. It is more hurt and one that usually needs professional help if the adult child can heal and live a decent life.

Marcia Butler was blessed with the gift of music that teachers discovered early in her childhood and we can all be thankful for that. She shared that gift with countless audiences around the world and I can only praise and congratulate her for her brilliance and her survival. Her story is another gift shared with readers soon when this memoir is published.

ARC received courtesy of NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company (February 21st 2017).

[Kathleen Flynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my god. This book. So much feeling, so much pain, so much beauty. It's affected me physically like a punch in the stomach, but in a good way. I kept rereading passages, for the sheer wonder of them as I read the last third in one setting, fascinated, horrified and ultimately moved. This one's a keeper.

[Tess · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, breathtaking memoir by Marcia Butler, I inhaled THE SKIN ABOVE MY KNEE over the weekend. It is raw, heartbreaking, and unflinching. Butler, who moved to New York City in the 1970s to attend Mannes, and then become a professional musician, recounts her life, choices, and relationships in a way that reads like a novel.

I really loved the descriptive world of the 70s and 80s New York that Butler recreated. And the themes of art saving a person from one's past and tortured childhood was beautiful and life affirming. I truly recommend this memoir to anyone who loves music, art, or the beautiful telling of one's life story. It is unlike any memoir I've read.

[Meher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had no idea what an oboe was when I picked this book. I chose it for its absolutely brilliant title, a very intriguing summary and the spectacular cover art.
I must add - the book took me on a ride far more emotional than what I had bargained for. How art and passion can save from a damning childhood. Marcia Butler may not claim so, but she is a highly skilled writer and can weave a tight, evocative narrative.

[Marsmannix · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book just tried too hard. I didn't get the inter-chapters in italic about "Kristen" maybe i'm too stupid. The author had all the advantages but decided to make a shitload of bad decisions. then write a book about it.

[lola Franco · Rating 5 out of 5]

sometimes a memoir can be a revelation. because of lily's great review, I reserved this at the library. it was just stunning. I learned so much about musicians and being a professional oboist. as well as that art can often just help people get out of unimaginable situations.

[Marian Beaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Sound is like a fingerprint to musicians,” says Marcia Butler in her breakout memoir The Skin Above my Knee. She should know. Performing with high-profile musicians, she made her mark as principal oboist on world-renowned stages.

Music is also medicine, Butler seems to say, healing hurts from a love-starved childhood, self-destructive youth, and a dark descent into suffering in solitude as an adult. Her life story begins with the glorious strands of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde she hears as a 4-year-old above the hum of her mother’s rumbling Hoover. Her narrative proceeds as she makes audible the sounds of a discordant home with a detached mother and abusive father. The oboe becomes her lifeline to sanity as she admits, “You love to feel stable within music’s velvety language.”

Bereft of a mother’s love, a sister’s loyalty and in bondage to poor choices, Butler still hears a melody line that enables her to survive. In the end, she shows how the power of music can sustain and elevate the human soul.

[Janet Zinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written memoir of a life in music and drama. The music was a highly successful career, and the drama took place in the relationships while in the field of music. Marcia Butler gives rise to a unique and articulate voice. It is a powerful book that will take you in while ushering you through the highs and lows of a fully lived world.

[Judyth Emanuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sensitivity and poignancy, with changes in P.O.V, create a certain fragility and spareness in oboist Marcia Butler's memoir. And like the sound of an oboe this book possesses a clear and penetrating voice. Thank you Marcia it is always learning experience to enter the fragments, confusion, successes and diverse paths of a life.

[Philip Carlsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two decades back, I was commissioned to write a piece of music for a summer chamber music festival in Maine. The players came from the top ranks of professional musicians and gave generously of themselves to bring my music to life. It was a joyous experience. Just recently, preparing a YouTube video of their 1997 premiere recording, I looked up their current activities online, and discovered that the oboist, Marcia Butler, gave up her music career in 2008 and has since turned to writing. “The Skin Above My Knee,” a memoir published in 2017, is her first book. How amazing to get a fuller look at the complicated person behind my long-ago brief encounter with her musical brilliance and open-hearted, down-to-earth manner.

Butler tells two parallel stories, laid out in roughly alternating chapters. The ones in italic font reveal the spiritual, as well as mundane, aspects of her professional life as a classical freelance musician in New York. She chooses the second-person point of view in these chapters, a strategy that allows her, for one thing, to unashamedly acknowledge her special position in those rarefied musical circles: “Your sound, distinctive among New York players, has become something of a calling card.” She describes several career highlights, such as being chosen as soloist in a work by one of the world’s most highly renowned composers: “As an oboist specializing in contemporary music, you accept prestigious invitations from living composers—but the next one humbles you. You’re asked to play in a celebratory birthday concert for Elliott Carter, but further, you’ll be the first American to perform his oboe concerto.”

Some highlights are not the kinds of things you would put on a professional resumé, but they go most deeply into the essence of why people devote themselves to music—the epiphanies, the connections, the flashes of insight music offers to its practitioners. She describes a singular moment in one of her performances of a Schumann symphony: “As you lose yourself in time, forgetting that you’re performing for an audience, the music seems to play itself: effortless, the oboe weightless in your hands…[you] carry this memory and sensation with you for many years. It has never been duplicated. Transformation within the shifting universe of music is singular and dear, like a newborn with flexing fists.”

Butler begins the chapter called “Texas” with what sounds like a complaint: “Four hundred miles. That is the typical daily distance you drive while you’re on tour with a woodwind quintet.” But it’s a setup. In the following paragraph, she confounds our initial sympathy for her having to endure such drudgery: “This is a glorious grind; a work schedule you treasure and look forward to, because it is rare to have the opportunity to perform the same program over and over—night after night. The first performance is vastly different from the twentieth. That difference is how you’ve come to explore and further understand music through repetition. Music, a malleable wonder, needs this evolution.”

The other story Butler tells, written in the first person, occasionally very grim, is fundamentally about her search for the love she never got from her parents. A big part of that search, surely, was the countless disciplined hours she put into becoming a professional musician, practicing at least three hours every day, making oboe reeds in every spare moment, saying yes to nearly every gig that came along. She was blessed in her mentors—teachers who recognized her gifts and were able to give her just what she needed to progress to the next level. Always watching over her was a kind of fairy godmother—the voice of the great Wagnerian soprano Kirsten Flagstad that penetrated to her soul when she was a four-year-old, lying on the living room floor listening to a recording of the “Liebestod” while her mother vacuumed. “Kirsten shook me awake. With the distance of time, I suppose it was love. Kirsten must have loved me.” Throughout the book, Kirsten’s sung words provide solace: “Do I alone hear this melody?” “Sweet breath softly wafts. Friends! Look!”

It’s perhaps not surprising that Butler has perfect pitch in her ear for dialogue, recreating emotionally fraught phone calls with her mother or sister, the give-and-take with her music teachers, informal conversations with friends, spontaneous encounters in bars, violent arguments with lovers. As she tells her very gripping story (which I read in a day), there were many times I wanted to shout at her, “No, don’t!” Or I would practically weep at the desperation in her craving for love. There’s truly a sense of two separate lives: the perfection and beauty of her music career, and the messiness and occasional danger of her emotional grapplings.

One question the book leaves unanswered is why, as we learn from the jacket blurb, Marcia Butler retired from music, and how she felt about it. After all, this is the woman who wrote, in response to one of those times when life knocked her down, “As long as I could play the oboe, I would be okay.” We can hope there will be a next installment of this marvelous memoir to find out about that part of the story.

[Jill Blevins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books which you might not assume any interest. The writer isn't rich or famous, not someone you'll ever hear about or know, and if you hadn't picked up this book, you might not ever hear about it.

But let me tell you, it is incredible and worth every minute of reading time. I read it in a day and a half, as once I got started, I started quoting passages to my husband and he didn't want me to stop, either. So don't judge a book simply because you aren't familiar with orchestras, oboes, classical music or music of any variety. It's going to give you an education about those subjects, as well as let you live through the rich experience of performing music vicariously.

And really, it's so much more than the oboe. The music is the thread that carries the writer through some of the harshest living you'd ever want to read about, almost bleeding through the page, written in an almost understated way, revealing secrets in the quiet way you'd expect from someone who plays oboe in Carnegie Hall for a living. And through this quiet, steady, lyrical, honest, realistic yet totally in denial-filled voice, you understand and live her story.

And it's incredible. If you enjoy the triumphant, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, square peg in a round hole, quirky, unique/nobody you've ever heard of type of memoir, this is for you. You can experience being so poor you eat a head of iceberg lettuce with a bottle of Russian salad dressing for your one meal. You can get your empathy expanded for women who stay and who return over and over to horrible abusers. You can live through what it's like to perform on Broadway, what it's like to develop talent into something spectacular that becomes noticed and valuable even while you have to take rides from people driving you from one performance to the next in lightning speed while drinking bottles of vodka.

We're all nobodies, really, yet we all have some special thing that gets us up in the morning. This is the best description I've read in a long while of exactly that drive, that grit, that motivation that pulls us normal humans through sheer terror and trauma to ultimately make it to something of a successful life.

[Minnesinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read this the minute I read that this was by a musician, about how music saved her. Because I can relate to a degree, I know what it feels like to be part of a musical group, part of a whole. my ear at some point somehow focuses on the sound of the whole work, hearing that more than my own voice.; feeling carried along by the music, feeling joy participating in the weaving back and forth,
the ebb and flow like an immense ocean of sound. When it's a group of professionals (or the very skilled non-professional), the feeling is sublime; it's not just an individual experience, but one for all participating; a feeling of transcendent, sheer joy. akin perhaps to what athletes call ' the zone': when a group is functioning as one, as a finely tuned machine, in perfect harmony, no mistakes to break the spell.

I played the flute growing up, like the author. I took lessons from a professional flautist every week during high school, so of course I had to practice. But no way did I have the dedication to practice 8 hours a day. My sister is a professional harpist and practices 8 hours a day, which is hard enough (especially if you play a wind instrument, or reed or brass, which requires strong lungs). But then there is the nonstop travel here and there for part-time gigs. Then there is teaching to supplement income, selecting the music, teaching, arranging music in parts, planning recitals and rehearsals, tours, networking... . It is very hard work. Just reading about Marcia making her own reeds by hand was mind-boggling. But the reed *is* everything on a reed instrument like an oboe: it would be catastrophic if one were to crack in a concert—musicians don't get a time-out like athletes!

One thing that struck me was that no reviewers mentioned the redeeming power of a good teacher. Marcia survived because she got crumbs of nourishment from her good music teachers in K-12. (As an aside, I love how she described her hack teacher, the one who just picked show tunes to play. I can imagine it quite well: every music student must have at least one teacher like that at some point. ;)

Even though I wanted to read the book, I had a hard time starting because I was afraid the parts about the abuse would be too difficult to read. I know what emotional abuse feels like, and neglect by a narcissistic, spendaholic mother incapable of real love. One who pits one child against all others, condemns the unlucky child to a life sentence as scapegoat.

Marcia Butler's situation was 100 times worse than mine, though. She had two abusive parents, not just one. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be abused sexually. Especially by one’s father—the parent who is supposed to protect his family. Not strut around in the dark naked, in front of a small child. He made music lessons sordid by exacting a price—lessons for lap dances. Absolutely unconscionable; hard to believe that a parent would do that to a child. But that is classic behavior for an abuser: someone in power taking advantage of the powerless.
He violated her boundaries in other ways, and so it’s no wonder Marcia allowed men to abuse her later in life; she didn’t believe she deserved better. It was familiar territory.

Her mother’s complicity made the father’s abuse even worse—talk about crazy-making. She was completely devoid of love and compassion; completely cut contact with her daughters, then had the audacity to write a 'tell-all' and send a copy through the mail. Staggering. Surely there was something wrong with the woman—and the father—and I have to wonder how psychologists would diagnose them.

Some might say that Marcia should have given up on her mother long before, but that's difficult when one is starving and lacks any other kind of support. It’s impossible for a child to stop hoping that a parent will someday love them back.

Even if someone finally succeeded in excising/exorcising toxic family members from their life, these families have a way of sucking one back into their maelstrom of dysfunction. Especially at holidays. Holidays are tough enough for normal people, hard enough for those living alone, but for those with toxic families it's a nightmare.

I don't think one can ever completely heal the wounds caused by parental abuse—especially when it's both parents. That is one tough row to hoe. Plus a sister who competes for a parent's love+attention ... it just takes sibling rivalry to a new level. Marcia's sister was physically abandoned, literally, which had to be devastating. It got her away from the abusive father, but the damage had already been done.

Despicable doesn't begin to describe him. Some fathers abuse their daughters sexually; some abuse physically (assault), and/or verbally. This guy did it all. The mother condoned it all, and ladled out her own emotional abuse. Their poor children were doomed from the start. It really is a miracle that Marcia not only survived, but thrived—as best as possible, anyway. She deserves a chest full of medals for not giving up, for persevering against all odds. She credits music for saving her, but it takes a true heroine to face her particular demons and rise from the ashes. Her parents deserve to be locked up—or at the very least, shunned by society. I hope they are. The parent in me is glad that these abusers were exposed for the evil they wrought.

I applaud Marcia for having the courage to write this book, and hope it was cathartic. I can imagine that it was. I hope it helped her move forward with her life. Yes, she was saved by music, but mainly by her perseverance, her dedication to her craft, and her awesome talent. Not all abused children have that level of talent, though, or live in a city large enough to have mentors to recognize and foster talent. This book reminds us that it is up to all of ns not to turn a blind eye to abuse and to help children in whatever way we can, because they are our future. Childhood is fleeting, and so critical to the rest of the person’s life. What happens during these formative years can make or break a child.

[Susan Henderson]

Marcia Butler's The Skin Above My Knee is a memoir of music saving a life. From the opening, Wagner finds the heart of young Marcia while her chilly and distant mother vacuums all around her. This music fills her with a sense of being loved. And throughout, music provides structure, consistency, and expression for her secretly battered heart.

The writing itself is a piece of music--rhythmic, focused, melodic. I enjoyed the details of oboe practice, how a musician must care for reeds, the discipline required of students at Mannes conservatory, the improvisation involved in performing, especially when fighting illness or reacting to mistakes by other members of the orchestra. But it is the emotional ride--whether it's in the music, or in the dangerous struggles with self-loathing--that make this story both beautiful and tragic as the opera that first spoke to her.

[Bill Keithler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very difficult book for me to read. Although short, it is extremely emotionally intense and there were times when I had to put it down for some period of time in order to gain relief from the intensity of the author's descriptions of her self-destructive behavior. She was both, an acclaimed musician and a victim of parental abuse--sexual and otherwise. The book recounts her struggle throughout most of her life to deal with the repercussions of her father's sexual abuse and her mother's, perhaps even more destructive abuse of denial and neglect. Thankfully, she seems to have overcome the damage, although I suspect that there will always be scars and emotional scabs torn off as these memories cannot be completely moved beyond.

Ms Butler's book is a gift.

[Christine Bowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

**Goodreads giveaway win**

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book at all. I was completely sucked in by Marcia's story. This book is beautifully written and as devastating as her tale is, I couldn't stop reading. I applaud Ms. Butler for sharing what I can only call a heartbreaking story of what the effects of a lack of parental affection and attention has on a person throughout their life. The feelings written were jumping from the pages to be felt by the reader in the most raw yet beautiful way possible. I highly recommend this book.

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book and could NOT put it down. And since I finished, I can't stop thinking about it. This memoir by an amazing musician reads like a beautiful piece of music. It's poignant, moving, gut wrenching, beautiful, sad, and inspiring. It's very rare that you find a book like this that moves you so deeply within your soul.

[Don Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

In addition to being a searing portrait of a person's journey toward self-discovery, Marcia Butler writes as eloquently about music as anyone I have ever read. Speaking of "you had me at hello" the first chapter, "Minnows," is a revelatory exploration of how an orchestra works, complete with the subtle power dynamics involved. She captures what it feels like to play. As a musician, I'm very critical of writing on music and Butler hits the nail on the head. All this and glass-eating too!

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really mesmerizing look into the life of a classical musician, which is so rare in the literary world! I enjoyed the writing style and storytelling very much. I recommend this book to all memoir-lovers and musicians!

[Betsy Myers]

I won this book via Goodreads First Reads. I am an ECE administrator and I look forward to adding this book to the lending library for parents and staff at my school.

[Katie McMurran · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unexpected find and not at all what I thought it was going to be. I was drawn in by her lyrical prose and consistently surprised by the challenging nature of her story. I couldn't put it down.

[Clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. Beautiful. Painful. Wow.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started this book with no preconceptions or knowledge of subject matter except that it was a memoir. Hesitant when the author stated this is how she perceived and recalls the events and the emotions that accompanied those events. It wasn't too long before this book had me hooked. Beautifully written book about a very difficult topic. I would recommend this book to any book club. A book that your reflect on after you turn the final page.

[A J · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a contrast-the beauty and skill by which she played music, with the mess and brutality of how she lived her life.
When I read what the skin above her knee represented to her, I cried.
The mother in me wanted to take her in my arms, telling her she is loved.
The daughter of a sick mother in me wanted to say, what they did to you has nothing to do with your worth.
As a mother of a daughter wanted to put a bullet in her father's head.
I will pray that this woman someday finds peace and love.

[Jennifer Didik · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5ish

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a tough biography to read. I really enjoyed learning more about the life of classical musicians. It was painful to read about her parental neglect and abuse, but her honesty was powerful.

[Sigrun Hodne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very American.

[Esther Bradley-detally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh My Gosh: this book was stunning; I adored her immersion and descriptions of being inside the music, and then to see her as an accomplished writer was well. Horrific life, but what fruits she has produced. Her wounds lead her to create this absolutely stunning memoir. It was amazing, and I loved it. Kudos to Marcia Butler..