Lorrie Sprecher

Lorrie Sprecher's novel is the story of Amanda, an Anglophile American lesbian punk with OCD, who vows to voices of the 'women in her head' that she would 'get to England even if it killed me'.

And so she does, studying Literature at Exeter University in the early 80s, and returning to London in the fraught augties where she not only meets the physical manifestations of her cranial voices, but changes her life.

Through it, the test is peppered with an encyclopedia of punk history, with bands, concerts, songs and lyrics referenced in such profusion that the temptation is to pause and try to track down the music!

I gave it 3.5 starts. I liked it more than I expected. Now enjoying the EP of Sugar Rat's music on Spotify!… (meer)

I liked this book in theory: punk lesbian chick-lit! Pissing in a River tracks the American protagonist Amanda as she finally meets the “women in [her] head” and creates a life for herself in London. The novel contains many essential elements of feminism, such as chosen family, safe spaces, shared power, and the fight against violence towards women, as well as LGBTQ and AIDS activism. Lorrie Sprecher is refreshingly successful at subverting the stereotype within the chick-lit genre of the co-dependent woman. Amanda displays many characteristics akin to co-dependency, but her behavior is a facet of the anxiety that stems from her mental illness, not a display of antiquated heteronormative gender roles. Less successful is the attempt to subvert the damsel-in-distress trope within the meet-cute.

The writing itself is the weakest aspect of Pissing in a River. While mental illness is adequately represented in the novel, much of the prose is corny, cliché, and frustrating. Sprecher and her protagonist are clearly well educated on all things punk, but when the characters talk about music, they simply LIST their favorite bands in block text, rather than actually having a discussion about the music, artists, and performances. After grazing over these passages, I felt as though I had cut down the length of the book by half, and that this approach to name-dropping created a hugely missed opportunity for nuance and metaphor. While I enjoyed the concepts and themes of this novel, I was not able to appreciate these aspects until I completed the much less enjoyable task of reading it.… (meer)

I promised the women in my head that I would get to England even if it killed me.

That’s the kind of sentence that rivets a reader, and that’s how Lorrie Sprecher opens her novel, Pissing in a River (the title is taken from a Patti Smith song). The novel follows Amanda, the woman with voices in her head, as she builds a life for herself as an activist and a musician and covers the period from the beginning of the AIDS crisis through George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.

The women in Amanda’s head are brown-haired Melissa and another, darker haired woman whose name Amanda doesn’t know. Both have British accents. They are supportive voices, by her side during times of crisis, and she moves to England twice—first as a study abroad student and later on a tourist visa with plans of gaining residency—at their urging.

The first part of the novel covers Amanda’s time as a study abroad student, her return to the U.S. and the years during which she pursues a Ph.D. in Literature while participating in early ACT UP demonstrations. The narrative arc here isn’t particularly strong, but it gives readers a chance to become acquainted with Amanda, to see her drive for justice, love of literature, obsessive thinking about (among other things) Old Testament themes, and her deep commitment to the art and politics of punk rock.

The novel picks up in the second half as Amanda builds relationships with both a best friend and a lover during her second stay in England. These three women are survivors of violence and who have turned to one another for the love and support that allows them to carve out space for themselves in a world determined to ignore or denigrate their political values and their identities as lesbians.

The punk rock that Amanda loves serves as a sort of sound track for the novel. She quotes lyrics and emulates the playing of her favorite guitarists. Long passages of the novel list bands, albums, concerts:

I had [my friend in London] listening to the Dils and X from Southern California; M.I.A. from Las Vegas; the Dead Kennedys, Rancid, Romeo Void, and the Avengers from San Francisco; Hüsker Dü and the Replacements from Minneapolis; Dag Nasty, Minor Threat, and Bad Brains from Washington, D.C., and the first REM album.

These constant references to both U.S. and European bands can be enlightening, but they can be demanding as well. Readers will want to pause repeatedly to hunt down samples of these artists’ works, which adds texture to the reading experience, but also feels a bit disruptive.

My feelings shifted often as I read this novel. At times I was moved by it; at other times the first-person narration felt more like summary than memory. But, having finished reading it, I find my assessment of the novel is steadily improving. Sprecher, through her characters, has wrestled with significant challenges of our time, particularly the challenge of being represented by a government one disagrees with and feels powerless to change.

The fact that the three women at the center of this novel create a family among themselves is nothing short of a triumph. This accomplishment doesn’t mitigate the violence and injustice of contemporary life, but it does affirm for readers the possibility of finding a source of support that makes acknowledging and responding to this violence and these injustices possible.… (meer)