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A review by abbie52923
My Dark Places by James Ellroy
2.0
CW/TW for this book and potentially this review: Rape, Sexual Assault, Racism, Homophobia, Child Abuse/Neglect, Drug Use, Incestual Fantasies (no incest takes place), Misogyny. And probably others, but that's already a long list.
I read this book for our first book club of the new year. It was highly praised by others in my group who had heard it was a fantastic read because of his notoriety around his previous book "The Black Dahlia". I've never read any of James Ellroy's writing before so was not prepared for it in any way.
This book is about the author's personal experience with his mother being murdered when the author was only 10 years old. It goes through the case in as much detail as the author could give, along with his personal journey after his mother was killed - including his downward spiral into alcohol, drugs, homelessness, and jail time. He also discusses several other cases that are adjacent to his mother's but that they do not believe share the same murderer. Towards the last third of the book, he focuses on a specific case that the author and his partner retired detective believe are, in fact, connected.
Overall, the writing is stilted. The sentences are short, monotonous and repetitive. I found the most interesting part of the book to be the last 100 pages or so, when he finally starts getting into his mother's life outside of her being a murder victim. The information is blunt with no emotional attachment to any of it.
The author includes a lot of information about his sexual fantasies for his mother and seems to have a preoccupation with both his mother and his fathers bodies, including her breasts and his penis (which he mentions multiple times in the book and I still don't know why it's relevant).
The language used in the book is inflammatory at times. Racial slurs are thrown around as if he is still living and writing in the 1950's (the book was published in 1996). He uses slurs for many different races and ethnicities, including using the N-Word at least once. He discusses his fascination with neo-nazi-ism in his youth, how he bought and then handed out white supremacist propaganda at his school that was made up of a largely Jewish population. If he had learned from these actions and apologized for them in the book, perhaps I would feel differently. But it does not seem that he's really acknowledged how harmful this behavior and language was and still is as he continues to use it throughout the book.
There is a lot of victim blaming language towards his mother as well as other victims that he talks about. He makes grand generalizations about why men murder women - some of them accurate, some of them not. The Profile that is provided to the author has similar language, gauging the risk of the lifestyle his mother lead which resulted in her death. At one point the profile says **SPOILER ALERT** "After having consensual sex, the victim REINSERTED her tampon" (Caps are my emphasis, not from the book). What woman REINSERTS a used tampon? That would be nearly impossible and highly uncomfortable at the least. The insinuation here is that the woman was not raped, but killed after engaging in sex.
Overall, I did not like this book because of the problematic list of things above. As an author, you can provide a sense of what a time felt like without using inflammatory language. This took away from the primary goal of finding the person who killed the author's mother in a way that I think diminishes both her story and her murder.
If you don't want to read it, but feel like you may have information on the murder of either Geneva "Jean" Hilliker Ellroy or Bobbie Long, the book lists 1-800-717-6517 as a tip line that you can call. I'm unsure if the line is still active as this book was published in the mid-90's.
I read this book for our first book club of the new year. It was highly praised by others in my group who had heard it was a fantastic read because of his notoriety around his previous book "The Black Dahlia". I've never read any of James Ellroy's writing before so was not prepared for it in any way.
This book is about the author's personal experience with his mother being murdered when the author was only 10 years old. It goes through the case in as much detail as the author could give, along with his personal journey after his mother was killed - including his downward spiral into alcohol, drugs, homelessness, and jail time. He also discusses several other cases that are adjacent to his mother's but that they do not believe share the same murderer. Towards the last third of the book, he focuses on a specific case that the author and his partner retired detective believe are, in fact, connected.
Overall, the writing is stilted. The sentences are short, monotonous and repetitive. I found the most interesting part of the book to be the last 100 pages or so, when he finally starts getting into his mother's life outside of her being a murder victim. The information is blunt with no emotional attachment to any of it.
The author includes a lot of information about his sexual fantasies for his mother and seems to have a preoccupation with both his mother and his fathers bodies, including her breasts and his penis (which he mentions multiple times in the book and I still don't know why it's relevant).
The language used in the book is inflammatory at times. Racial slurs are thrown around as if he is still living and writing in the 1950's (the book was published in 1996). He uses slurs for many different races and ethnicities, including using the N-Word at least once. He discusses his fascination with neo-nazi-ism in his youth, how he bought and then handed out white supremacist propaganda at his school that was made up of a largely Jewish population. If he had learned from these actions and apologized for them in the book, perhaps I would feel differently. But it does not seem that he's really acknowledged how harmful this behavior and language was and still is as he continues to use it throughout the book.
There is a lot of victim blaming language towards his mother as well as other victims that he talks about. He makes grand generalizations about why men murder women - some of them accurate, some of them not. The Profile that is provided to the author has similar language, gauging the risk of the lifestyle his mother lead which resulted in her death. At one point the profile says **SPOILER ALERT** "After having consensual sex, the victim REINSERTED her tampon" (Caps are my emphasis, not from the book). What woman REINSERTS a used tampon? That would be nearly impossible and highly uncomfortable at the least. The insinuation here is that the woman was not raped, but killed after engaging in sex.
Overall, I did not like this book because of the problematic list of things above. As an author, you can provide a sense of what a time felt like without using inflammatory language. This took away from the primary goal of finding the person who killed the author's mother in a way that I think diminishes both her story and her murder.
If you don't want to read it, but feel like you may have information on the murder of either Geneva "Jean" Hilliker Ellroy or Bobbie Long, the book lists 1-800-717-6517 as a tip line that you can call. I'm unsure if the line is still active as this book was published in the mid-90's.