As one third of the '90s alt-rock staple Sleater-Kinney and half of the creative team behind the hit show Portlandia, Carrie Brownstein has been a respected, if under the radar, force in pop culture for the last 20 years. On the heels of Sleater-Kinney's reunion, she's turned her sizable talents to autobiography. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl documents Brownstein's adolescence through the formation, then dissolution, of Sleater-Kinney, exploring her parents' broken marriage, her father's homosexuality and her own identity (sexual and otherwise). It also charts the rise of a rock band from the inside, eschewing typical stories of bacchanalia and artistic triumph in order to focus on how tough it is to create art, then tour across the world promoting it.
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is best when discussing music, whether that's the genesis of some of Sleater-Kinney's songs or Brownstein's interest in Madonna at an early age. She brilliantly illustrates her working relationship with bandmates Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss, describing how her and Tucker's guitars work in unison and how Weiss's distinctive drumming grounds their sound. Readers can easily pick up a Sleater-Kinney album and understand exactly what Brownstein describes. The book is knowledgeable without being technical, and one does not need to know Brownstein's music to appreciate it. Unfortunately, not all of her writing works so well. Particularly when describing herself, she has a tendency to overwrite, providing three metaphors or adjectives when one would do. Still, even with some stylistic missteps, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is an enlightening window into Brownstein's history and creative output. --Noah Cruickshank, marketing manager, Open Books, Chicago, Ill.