Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs

THE SKIN ABOVE MY KNEE

Marcia Butler

Music was everything for Marcia Butler. Emerging from an emotionally desolate home with an abusive father and a distant mother, she devoted herself completely to the discipline and rigor of her instrument: the oboe. Finding structure in the closed world of conservatories and opera houses, she quickly became a young prodigy on the rise in New York's competitive music scene.

But old wounds lingered. Haunted by traumatic memories from her childhood and stressed by the daily challenges of life as a working musician, she descended into chaos and self-destruction. Fueled by her desire for perfection but thwarted by her own instincts, she dated the wrong men, took drugs and risked her life in pursuit of her art. On the brink of ruin, she finally asked herself the hardest question of all: Can music truly save your life? Or can it destroy you?

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 passions--even when those are the things threatening to undo her. Filled with darkly humorous stories of misbehavior, vivid portraits of a lost New York, and fiery conflicts behind the scenes, this is more than a narrative of a brilliant musician struggling to make it in the big city. It is the story of a survivor.

Available products
Book Published 2017-02-01 by Little, Brown
Book Published 2017-02-01 by Little, Brown

Comments

Gorgeously written, The Skin Above My Knee takes the reader from the world's most lauded concert venues into the innermost sanctums of musician's lives in New York. Always honest and admirably adverse to self-pity, Marcia Butler's beautiful book cuts its devastating insights with poetic love for the world. My heart broke in several places, and leapt in several others. When I finished reading, I felt as if I understood music on a level usually reserved for world class musicians. Stunning.

Marcia Butler has written a beautiful memoir -- meticulously nuanced, daringly honest, and utterly inspiring. I'm not sure I've ever read a book that captures so fully the ability music has to transport, sustain, defend and elevate struggling human beings through difficult times.

In her debut memoir, The Skin Above My Knee, Marcia Butler shows us how music—listening to it, playing it, losing it, and rediscovering it—can save us. With bravery and honesty, she unflinchingly tells her story. And through it all, music resonates and becomes the soundtrack for us all.