The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women - Hardcover

Ellroy, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0434020648 ISBN 13: 9780434020645

Publisher: William Heinemann, 2010

Synopsis

America's greatest living crime writer gives us a raw, brutally candid memoir-as high intensity and as riveting as any of his novels-about his obsessive search for "atonement in women."

The year was 1958.Jean Hilliker had divorced her fast-buck hustler husband and resurrected her maiden name.Her son, James, was ten years old.He hated and lusted for his mother and "summoned her dead." She was murdered three months later.

The Hilliker Curse is a predator's confession, a treatise on guilt and the power of malediction, and above all a cri de cour. Ellroy unsparingly describes his shattered childhood, his delinquent teens, his writing life, his love affairs and marriages, his nervous breakdown and the beginning of a relationship with an extraordinary woman who may just be the long-sought Her.

A layered narrative of time and place, emotion and insight, sexuality and spiritual quest, The Hilliker Curse is a brilliant, soul-baring revelation of self.It is unlike any memoir you have ever read.

About this title

Product Description

The year was 1958. Jean Hilliker had divorced her fast-buck hustler husband and resurrected her maiden name. Her son, James, was ten years old. He hated and lusted for his mother and 'summoned her dead'. She was murdered three months later.

Review

"A remarkable memoir...Hugely enjoyable." (The Economist)

"We turn the pages gripped with a rubbernecker's fascination...It is ugly, beautiful, reprehensible and moving. In other words, a hard book to forget." (Irish Times)

"High-octane...A breathless piece of writing...When it comes to pinning down the most startling possible word collision, Ellroy's acrobatic pizzazz is beyond doubt...This is literary knife-throwing at its most exhilarating and dangerous...An impassioned love letter written by a man who does at least sincerely believe he has now found The One." (Julie Myerson Guardian)

"A painfully honest book, written in Ellroy's usual blunt, breathless but often starkly beautiful prose...A monument to the author as compassionate lover, intellectual giant, creative powerhouse and emotional truthteller. It's a marvellous read, sly, self-mocking and filled with troubling insight." (Time Out)

"James Ellroy's crime novels have been much acclaimed for their dark plots, tough prose and generally bleak view of the world. Now that he's brought those same qualities to bear on a history of relationships with women, the result, inevitably, is not for the faint-hearted...Ellroy writes with such swagger and certainty that it's hard not to be swept along. He also - let's face it - has quite a tale to tell." (Daily Mail)

About this edition

• Publisher: William Heinemann
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0434020648
• ISBN 13: 9780434020645
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224