The Hilliker Curse, James Ellroy
The Hilliker Curse, James Ellroy
2 Rating(s)
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The Hilliker Curse
My Pursuit of Women

Author: James Ellroy

Narrator: James Ellroy

Unabridged: 7 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/07/2010

Synopsis

The legendary 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 after 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 on the power of malediction, and above all, a cri de cœur. James 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 The Author

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy—American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s A Rover—and the L. A. Quartet novels, The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L. A. Confidential, and White Jazz. American Tabloid was Time magazine’s Best Book (fiction) of 1995; his memoir My Dark Places was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996. The Cold Six Thousand was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

Goodreads review by brian on September 08, 2010

1. once again i'll post the greatest picture in the history of all pictures. myself. ellroy. manny. 2. the general busyness of my life these days doesn't allow much time to write book reports -- a shame because it's a terrific way to blow off steam. instead i drink. at kowalski's recommendation, i m......more

Goodreads review by Kemper on April 18, 2011

Ellroy, I love your books, but I’m getting a little tired of hearing about your masturbation fantasies. *sigh* OK, let’s take it from the top. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, the biography of James Ellroy: James Ellroy was 10 in 1958 when his mother was raped and murdered. The case was never solved......more

Goodreads review by Lou on January 16, 2012

This novel The Hilliker curse has alot to do with his association and his obsession with women.. One clear assumption from reading his words is he loves to brood and a bit too much. He's a one of a kind character, recently I watched an interview of his on video here and here it was outrageous. T......more

Goodreads review by Janet on November 22, 2010

What a weird, mesmerizing headlong kiss-and-tell memoir. I'm a huge Ellroy fan, there was no way I was going to miss this one. I just wish he'd slow up a little. I feel as if I'm on a high-speed bus tour of Paris, and someone's pointing out the major sights as we whiz by them. Would like to get out......more

Goodreads review by Marisol on June 20, 2022

James Ellroy es un escritor de novela negra muy famoso, con títulos como LA Confidencial, La Dalia Negra, se distingue por un suceso que aconteció en su niñez, que lo marcaría de por vida y que ha sido parte de sus trabajos literarios, incluyendo un libro que habla enteramente del caso. El suceso fu......more

Quotes

“As fascinating as it is at times utterly disturbing.”
 —Entertainment Weekly

“Crime writer James Ellroy’s most compelling mystery story has always been his own . . . But The Hilliker Curse is not meant to be merely a confession. It is an act of creation . . . There’s a truth of feeling in it, too, an underlying sense of what it is actually like to live in the vortex of an impossible yearning . . . Ellroy is expert and relentless at dramatizing the effects [of his obsession].”
 —Wall Street Journal
 
“This latest book is Ellroy’s most intimate and personal . . . It’s forceful and unsparing in its revelations . . . [His sentences] make you grateful to read his prose, with its marvelous fury, passion and energy. They also compel you to keep rooting for him.”
 —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Crime novelist Ellroy has given us a wild memoir in his hard-boiled, jazzy, staccato style . . . Quite a read.”
 —New York Post
 
“Perhaps the most confessional memoir I’ve ever read.”
 —Dallas Morning News
 
“From the fantastic writer who brought us unforgettable books like L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia, comes this extraordinary in-depth work about his own life. As always, Ellroy is extremely explicit, writing every word of this memoir with an in-your-face passion, elegance, and anger that will literally stop readers in their tracks . . . Bravo!”
—Bookpleasures.com

“Ellroy’s characteristically unforgiving portrait of himself as an angry and frustrated teenager is a masterpiece of savage economy . . . There’s no doubt that Ellroy’s is a singular voice.”
—Observer (UK)
 
“Fascinating . . . A searching and difficult but utterly compelling and often heartbreaking memoir of love and obsession from noir master James Ellroy . . . Readers familiar with Ellroy will recognize and appreciate the machine-gun prose, Los Angeles chiaroscuro and tortured psyche that Ellroy has made his own.”
—Shelf Awareness
 
“A fervent portrait of the artist as a young screw-up—an old one, too, who writes like an avenging angel . . . It’s vintage Ellroy.”
 —Kirkus Reviews
 
 “The Hilliker Curse centers mainly around the author’s doomed relationships, but also gives tantalizing glimpses into the mind of Ellroy the writer . . . As always, the writing is razor sharp, infused with Ellroy’s patented abrasive black humor. He holds nothing back.”
—ChuckPalahniuk.net

“There’s no doubt about it: James Ellroy is a fascinating character . . . He’s as hard to ignore as a burning fire truck . . . The revelations are compelling, as the author indicts the tough-guy persona he has so meticulously constructed.”
—Booklist

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