Early in this fascinating and painful memoir, James Ellroy describes an event that presages the next 40 or so years of his life in tone and encapsulates both the mood and language of the rest of the book:
"Booze blackout˜ age 23. I was a fit 160. The woman weighed three bills easy. I loooved voluptuousness. My standards were permissive. These were curves I could not condone. She was the fourth. Keeping track was easy then.... I was months into a run of sobbing fits out of pure sex hunger/angst."
It is almost impossible to read on, and yet it is impossible not to. Readers familiar with Ellroy, especially the many fans of his previous memoir, the brilliant My Dark Places, will recognize and appreciate the machine-gun prose, Los Angeles chiaroscuro and tortured psyche that Ellroy has made his own. The story (some of which is also familiar) is simple; at 10 years old, Ellroy was asked by his drunken mother, Jean Hilliker, whether he wanted to live with her or his father. When Ellroy chose the latter, his mother attacked him. He cursed her, wished her dead, and three months later she was murdered, creating within him an often toxic mix of guilt, rage, grief and longing that drove him, almost destroyed him, and would never leave him. This event and its impact have fueled Ellroy's creativity to this day, but it has also led him into addiction, breakdown and to seek atonement in women with the kind of relentlessness that can only end in disaster.
Those disasters are given florid detail here as Ellroy traces one obsessive relationship after another, many of which were built on and distorted by pure fantasy (stoked by years of actual peeping), memories of his mother and addictions to various substances. Given the extent of Ellroy's admitted compulsions and fixations, it is no surprise to learn that even the most stalwart of the strong women he loves, including his grand passion, ex-wife Helen Knode, eventually leave. The competition--Jean Hilliker--is just too fierce. However, despite all the crash-and-burn relationships, two divorces, several stints in rehab and what he describes as a mental crack-up, Ellroy remains a romantic optimist.
At 60 years old, he met Erika Schnickel (to whom this book is dedicated) and love flowered for him again. And this time, he insists, he has met Her. Still, we must consider the source, which Ellroy himself offers us when he describes Erika's early reaction to him: "I was nervy and pervy. My ego staggered her. But she still felt compelled."
The reader will feel the same.--Debra Ginsberg
Shelf Talker: A searing and difficult but utterly compelling and often heartbreaking memoir of love and obsession from noir master James Ellroy.