The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts,,
by Billy Bob Thornton and Kinky Friedman (William Morrow), is a stripped-down, almost uncut transcript
of recordings of Thornton discussing his childhood,
life experiences, and view on our culture. You can
almost picture him sitting in an easy chair, puffing a
cigarette, telling the tales that eventually would come
to populate this book. With a deadpan delivery and, of
course, that unmistakably Southern drawl inflecting
his tone, Billy Bob spins yarns about his impoverished
youth, growing up eating squirrels when he had to,
and then, later, wishing he had a squirrel to eat when
he was a starving young actor gunning for his break in
Tinseltown. By the end, Thorton’s stories will leave
the reader with a rawness in the back of the throat
that is perhaps not unlike drinking straight moonshine
on an Arkansas night.
Bond Girl
, by Erin Duffy (William Morrow Paperbacks), thrusts you into Alex Garrett’s life as a
neophyte on the bond sales floor of Cromwell Pierce.
Before long, Alex is forced to cut her teeth in a series
of Darwinian excursions: hauling a 100-pound wheel
of Parmesan, enduring lascivious advances of whale
clients, ensuring no foul play occurs during a 30K bet
to see if one employee can wolf down the entire vending
machine. As a writer, Duffy has injected herself
deep into Alex’s psyche, such that her personality
reaches a level of honesty that the reader cannot help
but root for her. Even when the apocalypse occurring
in the marketplace dovetails with the implosion in her
love life, Duffy’s character has enough doggedness
and humanity to prove the atomic core of America’s
financial epicenter is not just a man’s world.
Amy, My Daughter, by Mitch Winehouse (It Books), is a lacerating account of Amy Winehouse’s meteoric
rise to superstardom, her infamous struggles with
smack and booze, and her untimely but not unpredictable
death last summer. The most compelling moments
here are not the sordid details of her drug abuse. It is
the bravery of the author, Winehouse’s father, who
renders palpable the love he continues to feel for his
daughter, even while he never lets her off the hook for
the hurt she has caused, that makes this story so
unlike the usual exploitative stuff that gets written
when famous people pass. By turns riveting and painful,
this book sets the record straight for all the gossipmongers
as to Amy’s personal life, leaving no holds
barred. The end result, Mr. Winehouse hopes, is that
we will remember his daughter as he does: a good if
troubled person with a singular voice.
The Tunnel, by Ernesto Sábato (penguin Classics), takes you on a journey into the existential machinations
of painter Juan Pablo Castel’s mind. Like a plumber’s
snake entering the very pipe systems and sluiceways
of hell, this new translation of Sábato’s 1948 masterpiece
uncovers and lays raw the dark impulses that we
all, unlike Castel, force ourselves to suppress daily. The
inimitable Colm Tóibín writes an introduction that
places the work against the backdrop of Argentina’s
political history and long slog for cultural independence.
Yet within all of Castel’s psychotic lusting after
María, there is such lucidity to his tweaked-nerve
streams of consciousness, there is something so universal
about his suffering that he comes off as unmistakably
human. The nightmarish beauty of this portrait of
a man unhinged is without match.
