Rid Of Me
by Kate Schatz

Don’t you wish you’d never read it

In theory, it’s perfectly valid; respond to your favourite album not with detached critical analysis, but by, in Schatz’s words, writing “with each song, to each song and from each song”, and producing a completely new work, as she has done with PJ Harvey’s 1994 album Rid Of Me. Perfectly valid, except of course, that it begs a question: why release the work as criticism? Douglas Coupland, for example, draws inspiration for his writing from music, but doesn’t define it as commentary on that music. There’s a cruel and obvious answer, which is that this would never get published as fiction on its merits alone. It’s night-class creative writing, teenage-angsty, stilted in rhythm, vague in plot. Its simplistic victim feminism, demonisation of men and hippyish equation of women with the pagan, instinctual and untamed bears little relation to Harvey’s strong, stark album, and betrays a misunderstanding of both Harvey (who consistently declared herself gender-neutral) and obvious stylistic influence Margaret Atwood. It’s people like Schatz who give both feminists and Harvey fans a bad name. A better writer, with more nuanced understanding of Harvey’s lyrics and less my-first-lesbian-feminist agenda, might show the album in a new light, but Schatz draws out little more than a caricature.

1 stars

ISBN 978082642778

Reviewed by Emily Mackay
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