Rachel Cattle’s UH HUH HER is a gripping and beautifully written trip through the scenes from an artist’s life, bouncing back and forth in time from the unnamed narrator’s early life to the present day. There’s punk and the Boy with the Blond Hair, The Last Summer Before Art School, tales from her studio, word wrangling, dreaming and work, admitting that, “teaching makes me really anxious which seems crazy because that’s what I’ve done for most of my adult life”. The Narrator showing throughout how other women artists, writers (in particular Ann Quin) and singers forge an artistic path to follow, both generally, “Female sound always on my periphery” and, specifically, “PJ Harvey was smashing words all over me, all over my drawings all over the place…”. The narrator’s creative life a journey encompassing the interior and exterior: her mum, all kinds of relationships, “teaching-job-corporation-structure”, art, films, words (“words streaming inside us”) and how the selves respond, “sometimes although more often just after she was gone mum appears in the form of a bird. I don’t know how to put it better than that, she is the bird, for a moment reminding me and then she flies off….”. And UH HUH HER wouldn’t be complete without The Analyst (anal-ist) who appears every so often and at one point references books by Maggie Nelson, Chris Kraus, Doris Lessing and Jean Rhys (“He hasn’t actually read any of these books, I reckon”), a ghostly manifestation and owner of ‘that’ male voice, a spark and joy vacuum, always going on, although towards the end of UH HUH HER even The Analyst seems to be overwhelmed by the voices in his own head, not waving but drowning, the narrator no longer distracted (or bored) by his presence and deciding, “there’s time there’s enough time there’s always more time”. A superior book about the appeal and daring of the creative life, Rachel Cattle’s UH HUH HER deserves a place alongside Susan Finlay’s The Lives of the Artists, Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. Totally recommended.

UH HUH HER

– Rachel Cattle – published by Moist Books - £12.00

Steven Long