Don't Let Me Down

November 5, 2018
Literary agent Hosier shares an unsettling yet witty coming-of-age story, focusing on her relationship with her father, a man she describes as both villain and hero. Growing up in Burton, Ohio, in the 1970s, Hosier, the eldest of three, idolized the man who mocked her clumsy attempts to ride a bike, and who called her a whore when she was caught having sex as a teen. Alternatively, her father, who worked in advertising, could also be a kind, charismatic man who adored the Beatles (the family’s theme song is “Here Comes the Sun”). Hosier probes deeply into her own life, realizing that her flawed relationship with her father was the harbinger of future romantic mishaps, such as dating a psychopathic sculptor and a needy young man who cheats on her. Despite the darker elements of her history—she was molested at age 10 by a 15-year-old neighbor—Hosier’s tale is infused with levity, as when she writes of losing her virginity in a Firebird owned by a boyfriend’s mom “with the ‘I Love Jesus’ bumper sticker’ ” (“the sex lasted only as long as a couple of commercials”). With chapter headings named after Beatles songs, this incisive memoir effectively transports readers to the ’70s while exploring the weighty complexities of father-daughter love.

January 1, 2019
A successful literary agent recounts her life and especially her relationship with her father, who was "a mass of contradictions: a pacifist and a tyrant, an optimist with demons, a hippie and a conservative, a proud father and jerk, and a boy and a man."Hosier (co-author: Hit So Hard, 2017) has long dealt with unresolved "daddy issues," but she thought she had tucked the baggage neatly away--that is, until her mother sold the family home and, salvaging the last few childhood relics, the author dug out a Beatles-heavy stack of inherited records. After that opening scene, Hosier proceeds to detail her life story, one closely intertwined with her father, who reared the household on the entire Fab Four canon. "The Beatles records...had provided the soundtrack to our lives and seen us through every great joy and tragedy," she writes. "Dad and I used those songs to both connect with and escape from each other, to both understand and rebel against each other." Titled with songs from "Blackbird" to "Hey Jude," each chapter reveals chronological milestones that shaped the author's coming-of-age in rural 1980s Ohio. Underneath what seemed an idyllic "Here Comes the Sun" childhood stirred a controlling father who became increasingly volatile. Eventually, writes Hosier, life became "the anxiety of constantly walking on eggshells, the need for order and control, [and] the impulse to try to save others while losing [myself]." Permeated with events like church boot camp and school graduations, the narrative is near cinematic with insights about gender roles, love, and sex gained through experiences involving her parents, romantic relationships, God, and rock music. Struggling through a host of various traumas both minor and major, her mother's inability to break free, and her father's battle with cancer and eventual death, Hosier delivers a memoir that is less about chasing an identity and more about having one cast upon her and coming to terms with it.A vividly rhythmic chronicle of reconciliation couched with a 1960s rock-'n'-roll soundtrack.

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December 15, 2018
With a soundtrack provided by the Beatles, Hosier's memoir considers her Ohio youth and New York City coming-of-age. Starting with her parents' walk down the aisle to "Here Comes the Sun," irrepressible Beatles songs brought her family together?a store of brightness and instant connection in the face of considerable familial conflict. "Side One" belongs to Jack, Hosier's mercurial father who oscillated between graceful love and blinding rage before he died suddenly in the author's young adulthood. The record's flip side records the author's attempts to find herself, or something like love, in turbulent relationships and prescription drugs after her father's death. Ultimately, what she finds are the roots of her self-harmful behaviors entangled with those of her father's deep, often-contradictory love. Some of the book's best passages consider Hosier's youthful understanding of womanhood, and its complicated place in her family and their Evangelical church. A literary agent and the coauthor of the rock 'n' roll memoir Hit So Hard (2017), Hosier writes most ecstatically about music and keeps readers turning pages with suspenseful foreshadowing and subtle cliff-hangers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)