Wednesday 22 September 2010

Guess Who's Back...

The Demon Dog is returning to Belfast.

Once again, David Torrans of No Alibis will play host to James Ellroy.

The details:


No Alibis Bookstore are very pleased to announce the return to Belfast of James Ellroy, and to invite you to spend an evening with the man on Thursday 7th October at 7:00PM to celebrate the launch of his latest book, THE HILLIKER CURSE. This event will take place at the Belfast Waterfront Studio. Tickets are now available, priced £8 each.

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed 'LA Quartet': The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz. His most recent novel, Blood's a Rover, completes the magisterial 'Underworld USA Trilogy' - the first two volumes of which (American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand) were both Sunday Times bestsellers.

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 cuur. 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.

Anyone who attended the BLOOD'S A ROVER lanuch last year will tell you that this is an event not to be missed. Book your spot now by emailing David, or calling the shop on 9031 9607.


And to keep you going until then, courtesy of No Alibis TV, you can check out the man in action.



And yeah, I get the half-assed irony of using my blog to show a clip of the this rascal in which he dismisses "...the internet invaders." What are you going to do, like?

4 comments:

Adrian said...

I'm reading the Hiliker Curse right now for the paper...

James Ellroy book readings can be interesting events. In the Hiliker Curse he recounts one he did in LA in 2007. After being announced he took the podium and yelled "Somebody stop me! I am out of control. I need a strong women to take care of me and stomp all over in me in black boots. I'm not kidding. I need this!"

After the event seven women slipped him their phone numbers.

Gerard Brennan said...

Ade - That rocks.

gb

seana graham said...

I think women with black boots are always feeling like they are a little wasted, functionally speaking. It's nice that Ellroy is willing to solve that problem.

Ellroy and Northern Ireland must be very sympatico. Who'd have thunk it?

Gerard Brennan said...

Seana - I guess he's a hero, then.

gb