“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Friday, October 15, 2010

Nobody Move, This Is A (Short) Review: THE HILLIKER CURSE: MY PURSUIT OF WOMEN by James Ellroy

James Ellroy has written about the impact of his mother’s murder in the memoir MY DARK PLACES (1996), and dedicated his novel THE BLACK DAHLIA (1987) to her memory. THE HILLIKER CURSE: MY PURSUIT OF WOMEN (William Heinemann, £16.99) is another memoir, but here Ellroy broadens his remit to discuss how Geneva Hillker’s murder in 1958, when Ellroy was ten years old, set the life-long agenda for his relationship with the opposite sex. Rigorously honest about his early days of criminal activity, voyeurism, drug abuse and anti-social behaviour, it’s equally candid when Ellroy documents how the failures of his personal relationships fuelled his fictional fantasies of brutal men going to war on behalf of vulnerable women. Then there’s the allegation that Ellroy has exploited his mother’s death: “I read from MY DARK PLACES,” he writes. “The six thousandth public performance of my dead-mother act … A man called me glib. I brusquely rebuked him. I said she was my mother - not his. I said I’d paid the price - and he hadn’t.” The prose is Ellroy’s usual cocktail of slang, mangled idiom and staccato rhythms, an electrifying blend that fuels the most compulsively self-flagellating memoir you’ll read this year. - Declan Burke

  For a longer take on THE HILLIKER CURSE, Peter Murphy’s review in last weekend’s Irish Times is well worth checking out …

2 comments:

Alan Griffiths said...

Thanks for the review, Dec and the link to Peter’s – both great insight into a remarkable character and genius wordsmith.

I went along last week to Ellroy’s reading in London and was pretty much blown away with the man; his sheer personality, undoubted talent as a writer/storyteller and his command of the English language - using his trademark: Humour, slang, patois and creative profanity. It was quite a night and well worth the entrance fee.

Kind regards.

TheQ47 said...

Did you hear Matt Cooper's (almost) interview with him last week? Worth searching out (I'm sure it's somewhere on the Today FM site). They didn't get on well at all...