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My Dark Places

3.89 of 5 stars 3.89 · rating details · 2,763 ratings · 207 reviews

'ELLROY IS A UNIQUE VOICE IN AMERICAN FICTION' - JONATHAN KELLERMAN

On 21 June 1958, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy left her home in California. She was found strangled the next day. Her 10 year-old son James had been with her estranged husband all weekend and was informed of her death on his return. Her murderer was never found, but her death had an enduring legacy on her son - he...more

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Published June 5th 1997 by Arrow (first published 1996)

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Oct 18, 2009 brian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

in the grand tradition started by those two saucy goodreads wenches (that's karen and 'tambo, of course), i present my own offering: a pic of one of my heroes, james 'demon dog' ellroy, with his arm around me and manny. further down is another pic of him shouting profanities and right-wing slogans in the course of his reading. fucking gorgeous madman.

after the reading i took the bigass cardboard display featuring the cover of blood's a rover and had him to sign it to jack. jack is a pitbull. el...more

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Apr 30, 2008 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: probably not to everyone

Recommended to Jessica by: most recently, cate peebles

Shelves: california-über-alles, crime-and-punishment, dicklits

I love this goddamn book, and I love James Ellroy. Reading this made me remember why I liked his books so much when I read them years ago, but this is much better than his fiction. Still, I think having read some of his other stuff definitely helped me appreciate this more.

Ellroy really gets it. He gets so many things that most people don't: Ellroy gets misogyny. He gets bigotry and racism. Ellroy gets brutality and violence. He gets crime. He gets sexuality, he gets desire, he gets pain. He get...more

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Aug 10, 2009 Alan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Alan by: Abailart and others

Shelves: non-fiction, read-in-2009

Although many of the books I read have crime in them I don't really read ‘crime’ novels, or 'true crime' books (or memoirs come to that) so I would probably have missed this altogether except for the GR reviews from friends and others. Really so much has been written on GR about this book I find it hard to add to. I agree with many assessments, like Abailart's:

This is a deeply, deeply moral book. The honesty of the author’s laying himself out like a corpse on an autopsy slab is brilliant and ter...more

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Apr 17, 2009 Abailart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-autobiography

Relelentlessly energetic prose, thin with detail and thick with life: as autobiography bordering on fiction, it is largely a conscious reflection upon the thin procedural lines, maps, data of detective work and memory, and the thick emotional heat of memory as powerful as instinct. Though ‘factual’, incredibly fact-stuffed recording of events and contingencies, the end result is a wasteland of strewn debris where everything is disconnected: against the urge for connection, maybe the book’s core...more Relelentlessly energetic prose, thin with detail and thick with life: as autobiography bordering on fiction, it is largely a conscious reflection upon the thin procedural lines, maps, data of detective work and memory, and the thick emotional heat of memory as powerful as instinct. Though ‘factual’, incredibly fact-stuffed recording of events and contingencies, the end result is a wasteland of strewn debris where everything is disconnected: against the urge for connection, maybe the book’s core theme, is its impossibility as everything is broken, fabricated, boarded over, shabby, forgotten, confabulated, and it’s in a valley full of “shitty lives” and the valley of broken lives, broken streets, promises, plans, hopes, loves is in each of those lives.
Every sentence is one of three things: a fact, an epigram or a mixture of both. And each sentence is as precisely sharp and powerful and efficient as a bullet. Take this: “The murder was an epigram on transient lives and impacted sex as death.” Sex and death, love and violence are inseparable. Powerlessness vies with testosterone-driven masculinity that breaks women, consumes and discards them: “You had to control. You had to exert….Booze and dope and random sex gave you back a cheap version of the power you set out to relinquish. They destroyed your will to live a decent life.” Cheap, glandular responses to the “shitty life”. Earlier, “Sex obsession was love six times or six thousand times removed.”
This is a deeply, deeply moral book. The honesty of the author’s laying himself out like a corpse on an autopsy slab is brilliant and terrifying. He is the eternal man caught between fierce probity, rectitude, puritantical intensity on the one hand, and on the other profligacy, shitty responses to a shitty world, and the constant threat of final renunciation of decency and goodness. “I was a moralistic and judgmental zealot operating on a time-lost/life regained dynamic. I expected my women to toe the hard-work line and submit to the charismatic force I thought I possessed and fuck me comatose and make me submit to their charisma and moral rectitude on an equitable basis.”
To understand the world as a function of memory gleaning a body of facts may be numbingly comfortable but it is six or six thousand removes from life, settling for all thin and no thick. In his obsessive (thick) chasing of evidence about his mother’s murder he gleaned millions of (thin) facts, then realised that all these facts as sole carrier of ‘evidence’ were taking him in the opposite direction of what was driving him on, which was not to find her murderer but to find the woman he had lost, or never let himself know. His ultimate acts of memory are exquisitively hard, literally physical work involving solitary extended periods in darkness, bringing his whole will to bear on that which he seeks in the fragmented mess of his dark places.
The book consciously and repeatedly comments on the nature of memory. The short Chapter 26 is given over to it. And it is as much about his memory and his dark places as our own. Think for example of how he remembers his mother’s remembering seeing Dillinger’s getting shot, and his conclusion (through various techniques, slants, methods, hunches of memory) of how she did not factually see this at all but constructed the memory from a near truth, her being literally near the shooting when it happened and possibly hearing the shot (memory is a place, remember), compounded with subsequent news reports, gossip, pictures and so on. And to emphasise the explicit recognition that memory is place or places, and also to show the slightly different, less driven tone of his reflective style, of his investigations he says: “My memories were running in straight chronological lines. May fantasies were running as adjuncts and outtakes. I thought I’d be criss-crossing the memory map. I thought I’d be stumbling over real-life minutae. I was on the road to recollection. I’d conjured up Tweed perfume and some period snapshots. I was running a linear flowchart.” That raising re-membering memory into recollection is important, and the italicised endpiece of the book, an address to his mother, suggests the Proustian magnitude of what a memory of perfume over a memory of a ‘fact’ may bring: I’ll learn more. I’ll follow your tracks and invade your hidden time. I’ll uncover your lies. I’ll rewrite your history and revise my judgment as your old secrets explode. Yes, it is about the process of history itself.
The ‘lies’ he will uncover are innocent lies, a rewording to the denials he exposes in himself and his society as he and it try to construct a memory of good times in a reality of shittiness, For addicts, there is a specific point. Ellroy was in pretty bad trouble with inhalants, alcohol and other stuff. He just stopped. He decided to stop and stopped. He was doing some pretty bad things too and really messing up people. Again he decided to stop being like this, he expressed a will to decency. On his own, by his Self. It is certainly a crucial point to ponder, but Ellroy has a contempt he can only express in passing so low does he value some aspects of modern America: he hates the way what used to be obviously good and bad have been confused in professional jargon and sociobabble and psychobabble; he scorns “twelve steps evangelists”, “therapy freaks”, “dilettantees, incompetents, rock&rollers”. I don’t think I’d enjoy a curry with the guy, and that he would have contempt and disdain not only for some of my own values and way of life but also those of most people I know. But I do think this is a brilliant book, and end by repeating that it is a book that like none I have read from recent times is starkly set in a moral framework. I suppose you could just read it for entertainment and nothing wrong with that. But if you engage with it at the sorts of levels I have been trying to indicate, you will have to question not only his values but crucially your own. And the questioning, like memory, will have to be moral.
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Feb 18, 2013 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, for-realz, gr-friend-recommendations, rubbernecking

At some time between 35 and 40 I started on this downward (?) spiral of crime shows. I was never one to really watch them and couldn’t understand the appeal, but after my fourth child I caught a Law and Order marathon and was hooked. It moved on from there… as did the spin offs and then came CSI and all its iterations and then Criminal Minds and oh hell, Dexter… love that guy…. It got to the point that my children would get that Dr. Phil look and ask me why I watched these shows. I really don’t...more

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Kim My $1.25 library sale copy is signed by Ellroy! How cool is that?
Feb 08, 2013 05:36pm

Leslie Kent Monster of Florence, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Under the Banner of Heaven have been on my shelves for years. I really don't know why...more Monster of Florence, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Under the Banner of Heaven have been on my shelves for years. I really don't know why I haven't gotten to them yet. I purchased them (well Monster was a gift from someone who knows my true crime ways and knew that Harris based parts of Hannibal Lector on the crimes. And I love my Lector.) with the intention of reading them immediately. Then stuff happened. I've heard good things about all three especially Midnight which the lady at my favorite used bookstore recommended knowing my true crime thing. Columbine was one of my top ten reads last year. And although she's not really "top shelf" true crime, "Small Sacrifices," by Rule is heartbreaking. I also read her Bundy one which was crazy. I have yet to like another of hers but haven't given up. See I had to look at that list because I love true crime books and shows. (Not NCIS but Snapped, Frenemies, Redrum, Wicked Attraction. Pretty much anything like that. Although I love Dexter!)Since I can remember, I've had a "strong" interest in true crime. I used to feel weird about it thinking what is wrong with me? I eventually figured nothing otherwise why would so much material be available? I used to feel the same way about my interest in Holocaust books and movies. I guess eventually, with both, I realized that a lot of it (not all) was based on trying to understand how one human being could do something so horrible to another and the psychology and mindset behind it all. For the survivors (of either situation) how did they survive and how did they define survive? How did they heal? For families of the victims, how did they survive and heal or did they? Anyhow I didn't mean to leave to long comments within 24 hours but your review and that list brought up stuff I think about often. Really though, if you own Columbine, put it a little higher on the TBR list. The author did years of research and it shows. He also is a pretty neat guy. (On Facebook I admit but still!)(less)
Feb 17, 2013 11:56am

May 27, 2012 Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Loved the phrasing and the author's druggie homeless pervo life story more than the catalogue of vivisected women and the facts of various crimes. Descriptions of mucho paperwork and the prose form the life of the author's murdered mother in ellipsis. Read most of it on location in LA and maybe liked it since I'd just been on the same streets and freeways. Read it thanks to Bolano's recommendation in "Between Parentheses" and liked seeing how this one's occasional transition-less lists of crimes...more

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Sep 06, 2007 Jason Chester rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Having suffered previous dissapointments with Ellroy's convoluted brand of fact inspired fiction, I was slightly apprehensive when I picked this one up. However it's biographical status, hinged with its unflinching honesty and clipped, poetically charged sentences makes this an excellent read.

Ellroy's work has often been described as 'psycho-sexual', and indeed with novels such as 'The Black Dahlia' sexual urges - repressed or expressed, deviant or otherwise - cast long shadows across his sun dr...more

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Mar 30, 2013 Hanna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: elämänkerrat, ulkomaiset-non-fiction

Äitinsä kuoleman aikaan 10-vuotiasta Ellroy jäi tapahtunut vaivaamaan niin paljon, että hän aloitti aikuisena matkan tutustuaakseen äitiinsä. Sen lopputuloksena ”Muistoja pimeästä” on ja elämänkertana se on hetkittäin jopa kiusallisen avoin (koin lukijana tirkisteleväni tilanteita, joita en ainakaan itse haluaisi muiden edes tietävän). Kirjan kirjoitusajankohtana olivat menehtyneen Ellroyn molemmat vanhemmat, joten ei enää ollut läpipiiriä pahastumaan paljastuksista.

Eikä hän päästä itseäänkään h...more

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Jul 10, 2012 Tom Lucas rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autobiography

Regret is a pair of glowing red eyes that stare down at you from the corners as you fitfully fall asleep.

Murder is the dark bile that flows through your veins.

Sudden loss is the demon spirit that pulls your heart from your chest and sets it aflame.

Addiction is the midnight pitch that diminishes all it touches.

James Ellroy is a man who was predetermined to become a researcher of the inky blackness that lives within mankind. He is best known as a virtuoso of the criminal thriller, and an expert of...more

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Oct 27, 2010 Nicole D rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: true-crime, memoir

I found this book so compelling that I could not put it down until I'd finished it. Well, actually, that was my experience the second time I picked it up. The first time, I believe I stood in a bookstore (Cody's in Berkeley, RIP) and read all of part one -- in which James Ellroy relates his personal history of his mother's murder when he was 10 years old, and his subsequent fascination with the darker side of the psyche and devolution into peeping and drugs. Absolutely f-in' fascinating (wish I...more

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Jun 15, 2010 Bernard Rodriguez rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Part true crime murder mystery, part creep-o confessional; Ellroy's romansbilding is a tale of multiple shames, and indignities. The guilt of not doing his mother's death justice by loving her in life, and the shame of dragging her murder into the public eye for personal exploitation.

Meeting critics head on and confronting them with brutal honesty about his motivations, Ellroy's candidness severs through any judgements of the man you can make today. Scumbag first class? Sure. Grave robber? Mayb...more

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Feb 05, 2011 Enty Quadrophenia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 26, 2011 Elaine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biographies-autobiographies-and-mem, non-fiction

I am way too used to watching "Cold Case Files" and other shows that make it seem like no matter how old the crime, it can be solved. So it is a big disappointment to me not to know who the killer was. That being said, this book is not about who killed Jean Ellroy. It is about how her son dealt with her death and, eventually, her life. And his way of dealing with it is extremely messed up. Talk about your Oedipus complex! And I have to say I am not a fan of the style of writing, but I never coul...more

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Oct 04, 2009 Marius rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, crime

Not a perfect book, but a very very good one. Probably the most insightful true crime book I've read in a long time. The ultimate verdict is grim: Vicious crimes happen - sometimes for no good reason, sometimes because people put themselves in harm's way. Sometimes evil people do evil things without provocation, and there is little one can do be completely safe. Ellroy is particularly focused on the sexual component of crime, sketching out some very ugly truths about men's hatred for women. Ulti...more

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May 26, 2011 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, true-crime, 1990s

My Dark Places is an interesting combination between investigative journalism/true crime and memoir of James Ellroy and his struggle to find answers to the unsolved murder of his mother, Geneva. She did when he was 10 years old and started his love affair with the Black Dahlia case and all things crime related (especially books; beginning with the Hardy boys and moving onto the hard-boiled greats). Needless to say the death of his mother was particularly hard on him and caused a very self destru...more

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Aug 26, 2010 Jesse rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2010

Definitely dark. What I like about this is Ellroy's willingness to go into the psychological background of someone obsessed with crime, and reveal some truly shocking things about himself. He's also very wise when it comes to discussing the misogyny that underpins crimes against women and the societal support that it receives. I'm not such a huge fan of his style: the short, staccato sentences work for a while, but he's too lax about allowing them to become repetitive and, eventually, a chore to...more

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Dec 09, 2009 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The murder rate in this part of the country seems to have steadily increased over the last fifteen to twenty years. I have no empirical evidence to back up this claim, only the fact that I have noticed a greater frequency over time in the local television station doing what I call the ritual.

The ritual consists of at least four distinct movements. The first is the sudden announcement that a murder has happened. No names or locations are released, thus getting everyone who is paying any attentio...more The murder rate in this part of the country seems to have steadily increased over the last fifteen to twenty years. I have no empirical evidence to back up this claim, only the fact that I have noticed a greater frequency over time in the local television station doing what I call the ritual.

The ritual consists of at least four distinct movements. The first is the sudden announcement that a murder has happened. No names or locations are released, thus getting everyone who is paying any attention at all abuzz with excitement or worry. People with little to do take a greater interest in any law enforcement activity going on in the area during this phase. This soon gives way to phase two: The release of the victim’s name and the location of the incident. Any incidental details that register as either strange or disturbing are also revealed at this point. Phase three seems designed to occur as quickly as possible after phase two. It involves seeking out a friend or loved one of the victim and securing an on-camera interview. Everything that follows such as the investigation, arrest, and trial falls under phase four for the purposes of the sloppy categorization that I have going on here.

Phase three is the one that has always caused me discomfort. It just seems wrong to shove a camera in the face of someone who has only recently found out that a friend or family member has been murdered and ask them for their thoughts on the matter. Often the viewers at home are treated to the sight of someone who may not be too articulate to begin with trying to form words around tears. The broadcasted image leads to conflicted thoughts of sadness and empathy for the person’s loss mixed with a cringing embarrassment over the spectacle that they have allowed themselves to be caught up in.

Obviously it would be a bit short-sighted to place all of the blame on the news media for approaching stories in this way. Similar to Paris Hilton or emails for herbal male enhancement products, there has to be a market for this type of thing somewhere out there or else it would just dry up and go away, right? In my more wrong-headed moments I would also tend to chalk this up to being a symptom of these current times. However, when I saw the photo of ten-year-old Lee Ellroy only moments after he was told that his mother had been murdered along with the accompanying explanation behind the photo of the journalist who lead him into the landlord’s woodshop and posed him at the workbench, it became obvious that there is really nothing new about phase three.

It would be an understatement to say that such an event is going to cause some developmental issues in a child. Raised in a permissive environment with a father who wanted to be more like an older brother (and this is one of his more attractive personality traits), young Lee grew up to be just about the biggest jack off walking the streets, both figuratively and literally. He delves into a life of petty thievery, addiction, and perversion (I’m trying to avoid that skinless flute joke that I want to make right here…) and appears to be on the senseless path of one day becoming either victim or murderer in his own right. Something happens along the way, however, as Lee turns his obsessions with the Black Dahlia and his own mother outwards, changes his first name to James, and starts down the path to becoming a great crime writer. His mother’s case is never solved, and this is something that he feels he must attempt to rectify years later.

On the surface this book is about the reinvestigation into the murder of Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, but there are so many other things going on here such as a biographical portrait of Ellroy himself along with an examination of the very tumultuous relationship that he had with both of his parents. One surmises that this title served to provide Ellroy with both a reconciliation along with a small sense of closure over the crummy hand that he had been dealt in his early years. He shows tremendous courage in the unflinching way that he relates the details of his youthful escapades along with the unresolved sexual conflicts that he had towards his mother.

Having said that, I had some trouble getting totally wrapped up in the police procedural aspects of this book. This is most likely splitting hairs on matters of personal preference, as I’m not naturally drawn to most crime fiction or cop shows. Under Ellroy’s tight prose hand I still found these sections interesting, but for me they did not pack that enthralling brass knuckle punch in the stomach that his fiction does.

There was one other minor complaint that I had with this book. Ellroy seemed to gloss over the moment where he marshaled the will to turn from jack off Lee to hard-ass, demon dog James. It reads almost like Clark Kent bumbling into the telephone booth and emerging as Superman and I wanted more details. A sentence near the end of the book made me reconsider this judgment.

The paperwork and the pictures formed a life in ellipsis. Pg. 343

This sentence was a resulting final reflection on his mother as he moved pictures of her around on his desk along with police reports of the murder to look at them in different juxtapositions. It was then that it dawned on me that a recurring image in this book is his constant rearrangement of images and facts in search of newer, less visible meanings. He was constantly doing this either at his desk, on a cork board, or inside of his own head. In my mind, this single personality trait speaks volumes of insight into the Lee/James question that I was so curious about.
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Jan 18, 2012 Peter Marsh rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

3.5 stars if I could but 4 will have to do. I'd say a must for his fans.

I have loved some of Ellroys books, although I admit that they can be hard work.
I was really looking forward to seeing what made the man and what put the darkness in his head, I wasn't as completely satisfied with this read as I thought I was going to be.

He had a very troubled early-mid life and that is all documented here, the death of his mother was just the start but it was the catalyst for all that happened later. His re...more

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Jun 08, 2010 Marissa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, non-fiction

This is the first James Ellroy book I've read, although I've been aware of him by reputation for a while. Overall, I really liked the book, especially the earlier parts of it where Ellroy gives us a gritty and naked accounting of his mother's murder and his early life growing up without her. The book is disturbing and complex, with a hard-edged, tightly controlled, yet eternally seething emotional energy, which gives the voyeuristic reader a pretty horrifying taste of what Ellroy has had to live...more

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Jul 14, 2009 Steven Kent rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

James Ellroy has seen pain.

This book relates the tale of his life following the murder of his mother. It is the tale of an unsuccessful murder investigation.

The book is written in an unemotional manner that forces the reader to feel the emotions rather than read them on the page. From that point of view, the book is masterful.

Also, Ellroy writes in a powerful and almost primitive style that flies in the face of conventional writing--sentences that begin with the same word, repeated words, loads...more

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Sep 06, 2007 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: mytopfive

Master crime novelist James Ellroy wove this hard-boiled autobiography around his quest for his mother’s killer. Halfway through this painfully honest memoir, I began wondering what would have become of Ellroy if he hadn’t started writing. Conclusive proof that fact and fiction are moulded from the same clay. (Ranks in my all-time Top-5.)

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Nov 01, 2012 eva rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bios-memoirs, true-crime

Reading James Ellroy My Dark Places with Alice Sebold Lucky left me jittery at night. In his memoir he recounts the murder of his mother Jean Hilliker in El Monte, Ca. Admittedly, I wanted to read this because I'm from El Monte and nothing news worthy ever happens here except for this horrifying crime. I did like the writing style very straight and poignant, he has this way of giving away all facts then suddenly he gives you all emotion but he doesn't mix them together. He wrote about his mother...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What a twisted odyssey Mr. Ellroy traveled! Having spent considerable time in L.A. as a child during the years James was at his darkest, it's easy for me to conjure up images of him doing his nocturnal forays through Hancock Park. I'm glad he finally found proper avenues for his prodigious imagination. I'm glad he survived!

Ellroy was the featured author at a literary society meeting I attended a couple of years ago. Onstage, he sucked all the air out of the room with his abrasive, shocking patte...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Kimberly Rex rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When My Dark Places was recommended to me, I assumed the darkness referred to the violent murder of Ellroy's mother. It does, of course, but much of these places were the years saturated with exorbitant drug use, staggering sexual obsessions, and criminal behavior.

A large portion of the book is focused on these years and in truth I was a bit bored by reading it. It felt incredibly repetitive as if I was reading in circles. Despite my boredom, though, this circular monotony made perfect sense. E...more

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Nov 03, 2009 Godzilla rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, biographies, crime, life-but-not-as-we-know-it

A very aposite title for the book, there are no belly laughs in this one.

Before I re-read all Ellroy's books, I thought I'd give this one a spin again, to set the scene, so to speak.

This certainly does that, and Ellroy pulls no punches in what he reveals here. At times it felt too open and honest.

How anyone deals with the brutal death of their mother at such an early age is never going to be easy, but Ellroy lets you know how hard he found it, in no uncertain terms.

His style of writing and conne...more

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Jan 04, 2009 Felisa Rosa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autobiography, nonfiction, thriller

I love James Ellroy's fiction, so I was psyched to find this memoir, which details his mother's unsolved murder and his struggle to come to terms with the past. I think Ellroy is one of the greatest crime writers of all time, and it's fascinating to seem him apply his talents to a murder that is, literally, so close to home. Always quite dark, Ellroy's writing is downright feverish in the section that describes his youth as a petty thief, peeping tom, drunk, and drug addict. These sections are t...more

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Jan 31, 2010 Kieran rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 24, 2012 Gemma rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, crime, non-fiction

I've been a big fan of James Ellroy since I read L.A Confidential for high school English. This story about his mother's death and his life dealing with that is simply fantastic. This is no jolly trip down memory lane. This is the true story of a disturbing past which goes some way to explain Ellroy's choice of writing now. There are no happy endings and that is unfortunately the way it often is. I admire the honesty of this book as Ellroy has left nothing hidden about his mother's life and hims...more

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May 10, 2010 Michael Alexander rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Unspeakably raw and honest. This guy rips his guts open and smears his personal demons on the wall for all to see. I loved those LA Quartet Ellroy books, and watching Ellroy be just as unforgiving of himself as of his characters is just white-hot amazing. How did this man LIVE?

The Dahlia obsessions, the mother obsessions, the true-crime third-person terseness splattered with obscenities, all AMAZING. The deep and rich sense of LA social history as lived, AMAZING. Yet also SO writerly, such a cl...more

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Jan 15, 2012 Josh rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non_fiction, own, true_crime, read_2012

In 'My Dark Places' James Ellroy reenacts his mothers murder by canvasing the pages of the cold case murder book to deliver a matter-of-fact police procedural with a high degree of emotional detachment - more noticeable given the difficult primary subject. Initially overly descriptive and heavy on nostalgia, this open heart semi biography brings life to ghosts long forgotten and illuminates the troubles of a younger James Ellroy. Both inspiring and frustrating, the procession of the later invest...more

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About James Ellroy

James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels—The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz—were international best sellers. His novel American Tabloid was Time magazine’s Best Book (fiction) of 1995; his memoir, My Dark Places, was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996. His novel The Cold Six Thousand was a New York...more

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Quotes from My Dark Places

“Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.” — 7 people liked it

“She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.” — 6 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1295189.My_Dark_Places?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349044868l/1295189.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1295189.My_Dark_Places?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]My Dark Places by James Ellroy[/url]

My Dark Places

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