Publishers Weekly
★ 10/28/2024
In her first book, singer-songwriter Case takes a gut-wrenching look at her difficult childhood and her path toward a music career. Case’s parents, she writes, were “the typical cautionary tale of two teens who have sex for the first time ever... and get pregnant by accident.” That made Case, who grew up in rural Virginia, “a child of children” who weren’t especially interested in raising her. In second grade, her father told her that her mother had died of cancer; a short time later, her mother suddenly reappeared, and Case eventually learned that she was never even sick. Following their reunion, Case and her mother bounced between small towns across the country, eventually settling in Tacoma, Wash., where Case was legally emancipated from her parents at age 15. Afterward, she roamed Tacoma and began playing in bands. She discusses moving to and from British Columbia, linking up with Carl Newman to start the New Pornographers, and launching her solo career in prose that’s unfussy but often beautiful (Case preferred walking Tacoma at night because “there was less consciousness to contend with.... I wasn’t so on edge and my cyclonic churning could ebb a little”). With equal doses of grit and self-compassion, Case delivers a riveting autobiography that will fascinate even those who’ve never heard her music. Agent: Jennifer Gates, Aevitas Creative Management. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
Reader, I really want to hand this book to you personally and tell you, in one excited rush, how much it moved me. THE HARDER I FIGHT THE MORE I LOVE YOU is a hell of an origin story: heartbreaking and funny, brave and weird, hard to swallow and impossible to put down. Neko Case has been my favorite singer-songwriter for many years, hands down, and now she’s written one of my favorite memoirs.”
—Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
"This is a fierce, funny, moving memoir that will break your heart and patch it back up. Case's writing is as piercing and beautiful as her gorgeous singing, and will carry you away completely."
—New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean
"A vivid, exuberant, heartrending coming-of-age story that demonstrates the saving power of art. This book captured me the way Case's songs do: with their ache and beauty and promise that the only way through this life is to feel it all."
—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism
"I burned through this book in three feverish days, overcome by the spellcasting, storytelling, and pure song of Neko Case’s words. Here is one of the most remarkable people you will ever meet, on the page or otherwise: So honest, kind, funny, and tender—so human—you will fall in love if you haven’t already. A book not so much about the creation of an icon as it is about the lionhearted love Neko Case has for the whole damn world."
—Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch
"This book, like everything Neko Case touches, is a work of art — full of moments that kaleidoscope your view of the world into something new. Heartbreaking and honest and raw, THE HARDER I FIGHT THE MORE I LOVE YOU is a testament to the fact that this artist, like her music, was born from the fire."—Rebecca Makkai, author of I Have Some Questions for You
"The gift of Neko Case as a memoirist mirrors the gift of Neko Case as a songwriter: there is a warmth of clarity, of language selection, of narrative flourish. This book reads, and feels, as if you are on a porch with an old friend, telling you stories you've heard a hundred times, but cannot wait to hear once more."
—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of #1 National Bestseller There's Always This Year
“With equal doses of grit and self-compassion, Case delivers a riveting autobiography that will fascinate even those who’ve never heard her music.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Case has a songwriter’s gift for potent imagery…That imagination and wit speak to the other prevailing theme in the memoir, the element that gives it a lift: Case’s observations of her hard-won resilience.”—Kirkus (starred review)
“Case shares a raw and inspiring heroine’s journey.”—Booklist Reviews
“In her richly told memoir…Case employs the same fairy tale-like storytelling language in The Harder I Fight that she uses in her lyrics, casting a veil of enchantment over her experiences, however painful… Hold The Harder I Fightin your lap like a warm, furred creature. Listen to what the psychopomp has to say, and let it guide you out of the woods.”—BookPage
“Readers don’t need to be familiar with her music to be moved by her raw, unflinching memoir, which chronicles her impoverished and at times surreal upbringing as well as her long journey toward self-confidence. It’s a book that mixes defiant humor with an unsentimental resilience that recalls Cheryl Strayed.”
—New York Times
“But let’s stay awhile, you and I… reading Case’s gorgeous memoir, THE HARDER I FIGHT THE MORE I LOVE YOU, which hits you in the same places her songs do: heart and gut, funny bone and sad bone.”—Washington Post Book Review
“The singer-songwriter Neko Case’s new memoir is a superhero origin story…It’s through Case’s extraordinary imagination and resilience that she’s managed to make so much out of her inner were-creature.”—Slate
“A musician’s autobiography where the most riveting parts, the engine driving it all, don’t really have to do with her wild young days in a small-city music scene or her gradual rise to fame. This is more a survival story; a life in music is the solution, not the plot.”—Vulture
Library Journal
12/01/2024
Case, who entered the Pacific Northwest music scene in the 1990s, traces her life as the daughter of teenage parents. Her parents divorced early on and jointly raised her—which she asserts they were ill-suited for—primarily in Tacoma, WA. She writes about experiencing trauma, for example, when her mother inexplicably faked her own death. Family members close to Case, including her father, were in on this ruse; a mock funeral party was even staged for Case's benefit. But her mother eventually resurfaced. A stint living with her mother on the Colville Reservation inspired Case's love for nature, which she later incorporated into her music. Case depicts her childhood as lonely and impoverished until she discovered a passion for music, which created space for friendship, community, and expression. Her music grew and evolved, and the singer/songwriter engaged in frequent and successful collaborations. Three of her albums garnered Grammy nominations. Her success enabled her to purchase a home in Vermont, as well as horses, a lifelong passion. VERDICT A sure bet for Case's many fans: a memoir that is as intriguing and mysterious as the artist herself.—Barrie Olmstead
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2024-10-26
The alt-rock and country singer recalls childhood abuse, misogyny, and a wayward path to success.
Case’s memoir is informed by injustice, betrayal, and the serial mistreatment of women. Growing up in Washington state, her family was a study in dysfunction; when she was in second grade, she was told that cancer had killed her mother, who returned home a year-and-a-half later, apparently cured. (She wouldn’t get the full story till years later.) Date-raped at 14, Case spent her teens and 20s in a drug-addled world, then all but stumbled onto a music career. Though her experiences are despondent, the tone of this well-turned book is lively and often funny. That’s partly because Case has a songwriter’s gift for potent imagery. Her parents started out “poor as empty acorns” and drove a car that “looked like a nauseous basking shark”; during winters in Chicago, where her career took off, she felt the “wind hammering in like a bouquet of cold fists”; at a soundcheck, her voice “sounds like it’s being piped through a thrift-store whale’s carcass into a pirate’s wet diaper.” That imagination and wit speak to the other prevailing theme in the memoir, the element that gives it a lift: Case’s observations of her hard-won resilience. By turns, that has meant processing the psychic damage of her rape and her family’s betrayals, a disastrous fit of heatstroke at the Grand Ole Opry, an even-worse encounter with country legend (and overt bigot) Charlie Louvin, and more. Case chronicles her various career achievements as a singer-songwriter (including three Grammy nominations), but those feel almost secondary to her study of her emotional growth, which she discusses with a rare candor. “There are moments so lonely they become like personal national parks,” she writes, but the life of a touring musician is irresistible: “It’s both harder than the myth and also contains a more terrible, crunchy joy.”
A sweet-and-sour study of a songwriter’s coming-of-age.
