The Hilliker Curse

Resumen del libro

From "one of the great American writers of our time" ("Los Angeles Times Book Review"): a raw, explicit memoir as high-intensity and riveting as any of his novels.
The year was 1958. James Ellroy was ten years old. His mother, Jean Hilliker, had divorced her fast-buck hustler husband. She gave her son a choice: live with his father or her. He chose his father, and Jean--"half gassed"--attacked him. He wished her dead. Three months later, she was murdered.
Ellroy writes, "I owe her for every true thing that I am. I must remove the malediction I have placed on her and on myself," and in "The Hilliker Curse, " he narrates his quest for "atonement in women." He unsparingly describes his shattered childhood, his delinquent teens, his writing life, his love affairs and marriages, a nervous breakdown and the beginning of a relationship with an extraordinary woman who may just be the long-sought Her. It is a layered narrative of time and place, emotion and insight, sexuality and spiritual quest. And all of it is reported with gut-wrenching and heart-rending candor.