Shock-performance artist Carver (Dancing Queen
) offers a spunky, well-fashioned memoir devoid of self-pity but heavy on moral-of-the-story hindsight. Carver grew up in Dover, N.H., with a sickly mother, but spent her 15th year with her father in California, when he got out of prison for murder. His hard-knock lessons "shame and shock [her] out of everything [she] knew to be and think," so that when she returned to Dover, she was transformed and fearless. Meeting "scum-rocker" GG Allin inspired her and a friend to start a "band," Suckdog, and join the wave of atonal, angry prankster gigs then in vogue (it was the late 1980s). Connected to the DIY underground, a cassette-trading society that eliminates the need for producers, seed money, even talent, Carver met and married French music rebel Jean Louis Costes; together they achieved notoriety with their outlandish performances (one act involved her peeing in a litter box). Other jobs include publishing the early zine Rollerderby
, which segues into an infatuation with the troubled neo-Nazi Boyd Rice. Carver had Rice's child, born genetically disabled, and the family collapsed when Rice revealed himself to be an abusive alcoholic. Carver slides into a chirpy concluding regeneration, while the overall ride of this iconoclast is surprisingly tame. Agent, Erin Hosier. (Jan.)
