Rid of Me

33⅓ Main Series #48

by Kate Schatz

Rid of Me: A Story tells the story of Kathleen and Mary, two women who find themselves alone in a house in the middle of the dark, forbidden forest that borders their depressed valley town. Amidst a dramatic natural setting, they negotiate their freedom, their pasts, their survival, and each other. It is a story of escape and desire, violence and gender, landscape, family, and memory. It's a twisted fairy tale, a queer dystopia/utopia, and a lyrical exploration of kidnapping, dreams, murder, sex, revenge, and love.

Rid of Me: A Story is at once a wholly original work of fiction and an innovative meditation on one writer's relationship to an album. The album in question is PJ Harvey's 1993 recording "Rid of Me," a release noted again and again for its raw sound, dark lyrics, and unabashed presentation of female sexuality, desire, and rage. In her prologue, Schatz states that the book is not about "Rid of Me," but because of it, and the book's 14 chapters (one for each song on the album) use the lyrics, moods, images, and characters to create something entirely different, yet intimately connected to the music.

Genres: Music, Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2007

About the author

Kate Schatz (pronounced ‘Shots’) is a queer feminist writer, activist, educator, and public speaker. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the "Rad Women" book series, including Rad American Women A-Z (City Lights, 2015), Rad Women Worldwide (Ten Speed Press, 2016), Rad Girls Can (Ten Speed Press, 2018), and Rad American History A-Z (Ten Speed Press, 2020), as well as "Do the Work: An Antiracist Activity Book" co-written with W. Kamau Bell (Workman, 2022). Her book of fiction, Rid of Me: A Story, was published in 2006 as part of the acclaimed 33 1/3 series. Her writing has been published in Oxford American, Denver Quarterly, Joyland, and West Branch, among others, and her short story “Folsom, Survivor” was included as a “Notable Short Story” in Best American Short Stories 2011. She has appeared on msnbc, NPR, and Conan O'Brien, among other major media outlets. She received her MFA in Fiction from Brown University, and a double BA in Women’s Studies/Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz. She lives with her wife and children in the Bay Area.

Reviews

[Kate Schatz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote this book, so, yup, I definitely like it.

[Eirin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Edit: jeg så jeg hadde gitt denne 2 stjerner for en eller annen grunn?! Jo lengre tid det går siden jeg leste den jo dårligere blir den. Den sugde as.

Dette var en litt dårlig slutt på året.
Ganske klein bok… den er veldig surrete, og leser litt som en fanfiction jeg sikkert hadde digga når jeg var 15. den har noen bra øyeblikk, men så kommer disse sangtekstene som jeg kan veldig godt plutselig frem og jeg blir bare pinlig berørt.

[Madeline Bradley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ahh I found this really disappointing which is such a shame because I wanted to love it. It read like a fan-zine to me which would have been fine if that had been intentional but in many messy moments it felt like it was trying to be more which is what made it confusing. I got the impression the idea for this piece was fully formed and mapped out in the writers mind for awhile but when it came down to translating those ambitious ideas, it fell short for me and left too many gaps. It really would have benefited from a co-writer or two helping her execute more seamlessly what she was trying to say. The passion for PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me record from the author though was obvious which I really appreciated.

[Leslie]

The story is hard to describe but I'll attempt it: two young women have synchronous outbursts in which they lash out at and escape the men who oppress them (2 fathers / 1 husband / a lineage of others on an old family tree). It is as if they are moved by some magic that links girls at their breaking points. Next, one girl captures the other but it is consensual. "I've always wanted to be kidnapped," she says. "It's like being rescued." They retreat to a remote ramshackle dwelling in the woods and the tale moves forward from there.

I enjoyed the eerie, immersive, and atmospheric vibe of this book. The prose, to me, is sparkling like shattered glass. In the prologue, the author describes how she reentered PJ Harvey's Rid of Me album, which she listened to repeatedly as a "swoony daydreamy teenager," and allowed narratives to emerge and characters to take on contours. The book is not about the album, she says, but because of it. I have never listened to this album in full, and I can't comment on how differently I'd feel if this was a record I knew inside out. There are two chapters named for songs I know by heart, thanks to late 90s mixtape culture, but my own relationship to those songs did not get in the way of the author's story.

[Bridget · Rating 1 out of 5]

This didn't quite ruin one of the greatest albums ever for me but it really tried.
I've written a lot of stories and works inspired by music, based on song narrators and this book made me cringe and want to burn it all. There's a right way to do this and there is this very wrong way.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhere between "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Thelma and Louise, though the resolution differs. Certainly not a universal experience of the album, but it tries to get at many of the things PJ Harvey seems to.

[Erika · Rating 2 out of 5]

to be fair, i had in mind what i thought it would be about and this wasn't it. Kate's story is good, very strange and interesting, but i felt the album had another strange and more emotionally interesting storyline. that is what i love about the 33 1/3 series, music does that for me.
Rid of Me is an album that changed my life at the perfect time for it. i return to it when i need that sauce. it was a liscense to be so pissed i might imagine fire to my fragility, reciprocal wounding, venomous strength, tie ups and, yes, even hunting like a panther; all sorts of neurosis a twenty something girl can have in her pocket but doesn't want to act on.

[Nathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've never listened to this album, so my commentary can be way off the mark, and probably is. However, this story wasn't really that interesting, and though it may have it's influence from the album, such correlation seems farfetched. I will admit though that I did enjoy the writing, despite my doubts to its proximity within the realms of this series. So, as a book, not a bad read, but as a 33 and 1/3, it wasn't much.

[Rachel Dixon · Rating 3 out of 5]

While an interesting concept (write a story based on the fabulous Rid of Me album), I found it difficult to get into. The 2 main characters seemed at times indistinguishable from each other and I kept wanting to write notes in the margins as suggestions for improvement. However, I think it was a gutsy effort at a story and probably would have been better about 11 drafts down the road.

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

for how mind-blowingly awesome the album is, it'd be pretty hard to write a book that would do it justice. i liked the concept but in the end wasn't half as moved by this text as by the album. i don't know what i would've thought of it as a stand alone, since i so much had the album in mind while reading it.

[Brittney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schatz did a magnificent job with capturing the intensity of its namesake. I don't think I have ever had such a strong physical effect from reading a book before I encountered this one. It swept me up in its carefully crafted metaphors that bled delicately positioned lyrics from PJ Harvey's album "Rid of Me." This story certainly did not leave me dry.

[J. Moufawad-Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

P.J. Harvey's Rid of Me was one of the formative albums of my youth. I was in grade eleven, hanging out at my best friend's apartment (he was an emancipated minor), and he put it on the turn table. Schatz writes, in the prologue of this book, about how an album you love can get inside you and I had the same experience––but with decidedly different impressions than it left on Schatz.

I actually appreciate Schatz's decision to write a novella inspired by the album (and structured according to the track listing), which was largely anachronistic in comparison to other books in this series. I think Darnielle's book on Black Sabbath's Master of Reality is the only other entry in the 33 1/3 series that takes this approach. Although Schatz's story is not the fiction that Harvey's album would have spun for me, the darkness, the minimalism, the bleakness, the rawness of Rid of Me are all translated into the story of Mary and Kathleen. I listened to Rid of Me throughout my reading, going back to the songs the chapters were named for, and could feel the resonance. It was easy to imagine her dreaming up this narrative through years and years of listening to Harvey's album, even though some of it felt as if it more properly belonged to the space of To Bring You My Love or White Chalk.

Stylistically and narratively the novella is like the queer love child of Laird Hunt's In The House In The Dark of the Woods and Amina Cain's Indelicacy. There were some truly hypnotic parts throughout, with an elegant prose as sparse as the Albini-recorded Harvey tracks. I also appreciated the obscurantism: the vagueness of the town, the forest, the ghost like bar, the haunted cabin, where everything unfolded in an oblique manner. I feel that if it was written outside of the 33 1/3 series, without being treated as some kind of definitive take on Harvey's album like these books are often understood as, it would have received more love. And yet, I definitely admire the gumption it took to propose this sort of project to the series because you love an album so much you have incorporated it into your own fictional narrative.

[Petty Lisbon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I went into this expecting to learn more about the album or what it meant to the author, but it felt like a first year art student's torture porn perspective of Rid of Me.

[Clove · Rating 2 out of 5]

So brave it’s almost charming

[Lila-Blue · Rating 3 out of 5]

babygirl what ❤️

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This took a little while to get started for me. It starts out very expressionistic and has no real hook at the beginning, but I loved this album so much that I pushed through. The rest is almost a parable about accepting the wrongs you have committed and striving for something new, but it's still very dream-hazy and without any clear answers for the characters. The ending would not have worked in a regular novel, but here it seemed pretty fitting. Overall, it's a quick read, and if you can buzz through the sluggish opening, an enjoyable short novel.

[Kevin Hobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book published by someone I actually went to school with. I think. Kate was the rock-star of our undergrad writing program at UCSC, and then went on to grad school at Brown, so I can only assume that this book will be the balls.

Yes, now that I have read it, it is totally the balls.

[Deez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my casual poolside pick for palm springs. I saw the author read. i love this album and the concept. every chapter is titled for a song on the cd and the first line of the song is the first sentence in the book. i find this imensely exciting and look forward to reading it in a day.....okay this one was easy to rip right through with writing in the style of the album.

[Markie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novella is an ode to PJ Harvey's Rid of Me. Kate Schatz takes inspiration from each song in the album and runs with chapters that manumit two protagonists, Mary and Kathleen, to carry us away with them from separate existences in town. Will they be captured or will they find future on their own terms in the deep dark wood outside town?

[Amanda Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

hell yeah. you can tell a story from two different points of view, the same part of the story in a circling back and repeating kind of way, leaving some things out in one version then elaborating in another. bold and exciting, full of dares and dark fears.

[Meghan]

To read based on Amy's accurate recommendation.

[Tatiana · Rating 2 out of 5]

this, i think, would mean a ton more to me if i knew the album. other than that, i think at the end everything turned out to be simpler than i wanted it to be.

[Cecile · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this...kind of sucked. Short though, so I'm not bitter.

[Alessandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dire!

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

An attempt to novelize a person getting into this album but it reads like some dreary diary, meh

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this...

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book doesn't seem to evolve. Every chapter seems to repeat the last, and so on, and so forth, and on some more, and, etc. Decent first effort.