Songs Only You Know
  • Published: 15 March 2015
  • ISBN: 9781616955335
  • Imprint: Soho Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $36.00

Songs Only You Know

A Memoir

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A gripping debut about a family torn apart, and how the author survived. This memoir is a priority title with real breakout potential.

Described by Darin Strauss as “Nick Flynn meets Karl Ove Knausgard” and “a book of relentless compassion” Songs Only You Know—Sean Madigan Hoen’s debut—is an intense, sprawling memoir equal parts family tragedy and punk rock road trip.
 
Songs Only You Know begins in late ‘90s Detroit and spans a decade during which a family fights to hold together in the face of insurmountable odds. Sean’s father cycles from rehab to binge, his heartsick sister spirals into depression, and his mother works to spare what can be spared. Meanwhile, Sean seeks salvation in a community of eccentrics and outsiders, making music Spin magazine once referred to as “an art-core mindfuck.” But the closer Sean comes to realizing his musical dream, the further he drifts from his family and himself.
 
By turns heartbreaking and mordantly funny, Songs Only You Know is an artful, compassionate rendering of the chaos and misadventure of a young man’s life.
 
“Few books convey the fever-pitch intensity of youth with such vividness and so little glamorization, or as deeply explore the heartbreaking complexity of family — both those we're born into and the ones we choose.” —Rolling Stone Magazine
  • Published: 15 March 2015
  • ISBN: 9781616955335
  • Imprint: Soho Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $36.00
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Praise for Songs Only You Know

Praise for Songs Only You Know

  • "Sean Madigan Hoen is not merely an immensely gifted writer, but also a seeker--of redemption, of clarity, of hard family history. There are moments of Songs Only You Know that seem almost too painful to bear--but only almost. What carries the reader through is both the naked beauty of the prose and the deep human certainty that it is always better to face the truth than to flinch away from it. No flinching here. I admired every page of it."--Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things
  • "Unsettling and riveting . . . Prompts us to reflect on our own demons, and how we've tried to--and perhaps succeeded in--exorcising them."--Time Out New York
  • "Eschewing rock 'n' roll memoir stereotypes, Songs doesn't glorify sex and drugs, instead exploring the harder parts of romance and addiction . . . A compelling, engrossing read."--Alternative Press
  • "Songs Only You Know screams at you, its limbs flail, and parts of it provoke a visceral reaction that might have you setting down the book for a few moments to catch your breath . . . one hell of a book."--Flavorwire
  • "[Hoen] looks back on a life battling adversity with brutal honesty and humility, and is able to see the comedy in the worst things that life has to offer."--Detroit Metro News