Holler Rat

A Memoir

De: Anya Liftig

Narrado por: Anya Liftig

Anya Liftig grew up with a foot in two very different worlds: While her mother's upbringing was so rural that the other kids called her "holler rat," her father came from a comfortable, upper-middle-class Jewish family. Anya spent school years in affluent Connecticut and summers in the holler. Shaped by the experience, she would go on to win a scholarship to Yale and become an acclaimed artist, using provocative performances to explore the contradictions and unanswered questions of her life. But when the world Anya was building for herself shattered, she was forced to reconcile where she'd come from with who she was and who she wanted to be.

In Holler Rat, Liftig masterfully interweaves family lore from her Appalachian childhood with her performance art pieces and scenes of the yearlong period in which her life fell apart, and plumbs the cathartic self-reckoning that followed. She takes us from her Mamaw's porch to Yale; from the site of a violent family land feud to a pre-gentrified Bushwick loft; and from a devastating childhood leg injury to having 243 raw eggs pelted at her in the name of art. In visceral, beautiful prose that ranges from raunchy and outrageous to sobering and tragic, Holler Rat is the origin story of an unconventional artistic life and a captivating account of the stumbling blocks, sacrifices, and discoveries along the way.

©2023 Anya Liftig (P)2023 Tantor

Brilliant Book. Truly.

Brilliant narrator and brilliant story. Hands down one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read

Honest, authentic, bold, expansive, intimate

Anya lifting tells her story. Personal, unabridged, w humility and true honesty, deep personal and familial memory, respectful of all yet unafraid to go deep, a life full of experience and deep feeling. Her physical, Emotional, mental journeys splayed on the pages. Her Reading was truthful
And non dramatic. Compelling throughout. Would
Highly
Recommend.

Shining light on life and it’s expectation.

I admire the honesty, authenticity and the tone of this memoir. To me it makes clear how important it is to love more and how important it is for us to have our heart grow. How can we reach enlightenment otherwise?
Katrin

Brilliant and beautiful

I absolutely loved this book, and I'm so glad I chose to listen to the audiobook read by the author. Liftig is a gorgeous writer and reader, and her story is alternately fascinating, familiar, gutwrenching, funny, and wild. Highly recommend.

Brave and artful

I have a high bar for autobiography because it feels really difficult. The great authors somehow manage to anesthetize their own egos so that they can fully splay their insides open for the public, but they don’t anesthetize so much that their facility for writing beautiful sentences, threading a coherent narrative, or palpating the malignant masses they find within their vivisected lives with curiosity that feels both macabre and scientific. Some books I’ve loved in this genre include Westover’s Educated, McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, and — until he turned out to be a total asshole — Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. Liftig’s book is up there with the best of them because it demonstrates (over and over) the bravery that autobiography requires in order to be great.

Meh, I Expected More...

Story is disjointed, not focused and not compelling. I wanted to love it but couldn't. Well performed however. The granny voice was great.