Rating: 
Summary: You will feel his pain
Review: This is the true story about the unsolved murder of James Ellroy's mother, and his attempt to help police solve the murder years later.If you have ever read an Ellroy book, and been touched by the ease in which he writes about death, now you will know what personal experiences he draws his ability from. This book could read like fiction, but it is not.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling, dark and intense
Review: This is a remarkable book. If there were a five-plus rating, that is what I'd give to this astonishing work of art. James Ellroy's quest is to solve the 1958 murder of his mother. Along the way, we learn about his twisted adolescence, and his brushes with madness, depicted brilliantly. The reader has to have come to grips with his or her own demons in order to be comfortable reading this book, in that Ellroy's feelings for his murdered mother include the incestuous feelings Freud always claimed we all feel for our opposite sex parents. Ellroy describes these feelings with enormous intensity. In fact, this book is all about intensity, from the first page to the last. I've read any number of true crime books, and though this is not exactly a true crime read, that's about as close as the reader can come to describing it. In the books I've read, the victims have, unfortunately, not been described intently enough that I've really remembered them after I've finished the book. With My Dark Places, Ellroy so intensely describes his mother, Jean, that she is as real to me as someone I knew intimately. I think, in fact, that "intimate" describes this entire book. Rather than give away any of the story, let me just say that this book is as intimate as a dark night's sexual encounter with someone dangerous. This is one of the best books of any kind that I've yet read.
Rating: 
Summary: Captivating
Review: I enjoyed this read. I like true crime. Found this one capitivating me to read and read more. I like Ellroy's style. it was different, but down to earth. I even giggled a few times at some lines. Seems like he is quite an honest guy. I am not sure if I will read any of his other works, since I really dig true crime. But maybe.. Good book!
Rating:
Summary: To hell and back
Review: The title of *My Dark Places* is not a metaphor. Ellroy's mother was raped and murdered when he was 10 years old (1958) and the memoir covers the initial investigation of her murder; Ellroy's later downward plunge into drugs, booze, homelessness, theft; his subsequent crawl back out of the gutter to go on to a successful writing career; and finally, his own investigation (with the help of an L.A. Sheriff's Department Homicide detective) of his mother's death. This is a sometimes grim--and always uncompromising--book. Ellroy uses the same graphic, blunt, jazz-like language of his fiction, choosing to show racism and violence against women in an unvarnished way so we see the true horror of them without the compensation of prurient tingles up our spine or the softening of romantic prose. This is the raw stuff of hatred and crime--enthralling, engrossing, pathetic, sometimes hard to take. But even at its darkest, I could not stop reading, compelled forward by the need to know and by the virtuosity of the writing. Ellroy's own need to know made him seek out the murderer of his mother, first to free himself of her ghost, then to see if he could salvage anything of his love for her. He is as unsparing of his own misspent life as he is of his parents, but this is not a book which proclaims, "I am a victim therefore can't help how I am because my parents screwed me up." Ellroy utterly rejects that line, taking an unsentimental journey down the spiralling path to hell which, with time, leads him to accept, and love, the wild, lost, and dark places he and his mother shared. Ultimately, the book is about redemption and rediscovered love, what we all seek, though perhaps not as dramatically and honestly as James Ellroy.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent. Disturbing.
Review: James Ellroy, author of great novels like "L.A. Confidential," "White Jazz" and "American Tabloid," goes through his own dark past in "My Dark Places." This is a great read, and an effective one too. Ellroy takes us into a dark and disturbing world of murder, lust and perversion full of rich characters, chilling situations and thrilling drama. And it's all true. Few memoirs are this good. Ellroy manages to examine the events surrounding his mother's murder, his hard early life and how it hellishly got out of control, but he also does an examination of the nature of crime against women, and that area is the most disturbing. Not only does "My Dark Places" give insight into the brilliant writer that is James Ellroy and how his mother's death has affected him, but into the chilling world of violence against women in America and opens the eyes to how and why some of the women that are found murdered end up there. "My Dark Places" is graphic, darkly romantic, all too real and effective. A great book.
Rating:
Summary: Portrait of an Artist Becoming a Man
Review: James Ellroy's intense memoir explores the development of his imagination and psyche in relation to the most intense experience of his childhood: learning, at 10 years old, that his mother has been murdered. With searing honesty, Ellroy portrays his obsessions, the breakdown of his mental health, and his life as a petty criminal. Simultaneously, he probes the history of Los Angeles (city and county) and the fight against crime there. I found the Ellroy's layers of exploration fascinating. The book's turning point comes when, in 1994, Ellroy hires a detective to join him in reopening the unsolved case of his mother's murder. At this juncture, as he explores the history of detective Stoner, as he explores L. A. more deeply, and as he continues to come to terms with his own life, all of the many dimensions of this memoir begin to cohere and an extraordinary portrait of an artist, James Ellroy, and his milieu, Los Angeles, results.
Rating:
Summary: Intense. Creepy. Personal. Brave. Ellroy.
Review: The only question I have about this book is one I can't answer: Is Ellroy's "Bad Man Act" just an act or is he just pretending that it's an act and he is, in fact, the Hitler-loving racist bad man? Where does his heart lie? This book attempts to answer that question, I think, in its own confusing way. In the end, I think Ellroy is a truly weird, gifted, obsessed, slightly over-rated, over-the-top evil genius. Any man who would confess to the things he's done, who would desecrate his mother's memory while worshipping it at the same time, is someone to watch. I don't think I'd want to be him or meet him, but I can read his books.
Rating:
Summary: Not stylish but passionate
Review: I think most high school sophomores can write better sentences than Ellroy's which are devoid of any complexity like clauses and phrases. Most sentences begin with the subject and follow a monotonous pattern which is annoying. However, Ellroy's passion and powers of observation are rarities that impel the reader through the wasteland of his prose. The book is almost unbearably intense as he deals with the raw emotions of facing up to his guilt in emotionally abandoning his mother who was murdered when he was ten. He makes sleazy L.A. come alive; the reader can understand his attraction to this nearly evil place. This is a creepy but fascinating world.
Rating:
Summary: Dark is an understatement
Review: I have been a fan of James Ellroy's for a couple of years now. After reading American Tabloid and LA Confidential, i wanted to know more about the genius behind them. MY DARK PLACES reveals so much. He writes bravely and leaves nothing to the imagionation. I could not belive how honets he is. This is a must-have book.
Rating: 
Summary: Pedantic
Review: I must admit that this is my first James Ellroy book (having selected it in my book club based on the interesting sounding synopsis). If I weren't reading it for the book club, I would not have bothered finishing it (I still wish I hadn't). I could deal with Ellroy's "hip" lingo and short sentences, if only they were about something I could care about (no, in my opinion I shouldn't have to read his other books in order to appreciate this one). I didn't connect with any of the characters (and it's not like he developed many). He does a good job at painting the El Monte area of the late 50's but all the people you meet are folks that really are not that interesting. The first part of the book drags, with accounts and, often verbatim, transcripts of the initial investigation. When it's finished, you hope that finally something interesting is going to happen. You are sorely disappointed. In the second section Ellroy gets to play the exhibitionist. He tells you all about his deprived (depraved?) childhood, and goes into vivid detail about his Oedipal tendencies and his youthful exploits with drugs, petty theft and the occasional voyeurism. Are we supposed to be impressed? Shocked? Feel sorry for the kid? Admire the now-successful author? I did neither; instead the pathetic little creep bored me do death. The next two sections add the retired LA detective who's supposed to help him to uncover the dormant case. He's the first likeable character we meet (there are very few altogether), but again, Ellroy drones on and on about his background and many of his cases. Sure, the cases have nothing to do with Ellroy's mom, but hey, since they involve murdered women, which Ellroy digs, we get to read all about them. The whole re-investigation is one huge, never ending tedium. In the final section we meet Ellroy's estranged relatives and get some background on his mom (nope, not very interesting or revealing, either). Finally, as you breathe a sigh of relieve, the book mercifully peters out. I don't understand how Ellroy's editor would let him publish this schlock. Ellroy is simply regurgitating his research (we wouldn't want the years of obsessive search be a total waste, would we?) and performing some uninspiring self-psychoanalysis. He should know by now that despite the cliché, truth is usually NOT stranger than fiction. And in his case, it's definitely much less interesting.
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