Details in Helene's story about being a rich widow don't seem to add up. His only description of Helene is vague and it takes place in one of the autobiography sections of the novel and in the previous two, he lied his ass off about situations to make himself the blameless put-upon hero in the situations.
He cooks up stories to explain his predicament all the time and now he's explaining to us how he's died but - as before - the anger in him makes it hard for him to keep the details straight or to stay calm and reasonable about his predicaments with the same tone that the autobiography parts always start with. Both stories, I think, stay true to Dolly's character in that both place the blame solely on the woman.
I think the last chapter is meant to be vague enough for you, the reader, to have to decide for yourself what was the truth and what was Dolly trying to make excuses for his situation.
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See 2 questions about A Hell of a Woman…. Lists with This Book. Down on his luck salesman Frank Dillon meets a girl named Mona who's being abused and practically put on the street corner by her elderly aunt. When Dillon finds out the aunt has over a hundred thousand dollars hidden in the house, he plans to kill her and run off with Mona.
Unfortunately, this book was written by Jim Thompson Nobody writes noir tales about the wheels coming off an already shaky plan like old Mr. Cheerful himself, Jim Thompson. A Hell of a Woman is a tale very nearly from the Down on his luck salesman Frank Dillon meets a girl named Mona who's being abused and practically put on the street corner by her elderly aunt. A Hell of a Woman is a tale very nearly from the James M. Man meets woman, bumps off someone in order to be with her, then quickly descends into madness. Frank Dillon coming unglued is a testament to Jim Thompson's skill as a writer.
As things start coming unraveled, Frank's cracking is very believable. The way his personality splits into two parts was very well done and quite jarring toward the end. That's about all I can say without giving too much away. This is definitely an upper tier Jim Thompson book. It's an easy four stars. View all 11 comments. Unless that book is by Jim Thompson.
In some ways this is a typical noir story with a small time loser coming up with a criminal scheme to get the better life he thinks he deserves. However, since this is Jim Thompson the plot takes enough twists and turns to keep you guessing even if you have a pretty good idea of the outcome. At least until the very end. View all 14 comments. Even an Arizona summer starts to seem dark under the weight of too much Thompson.
Finishing this book makes me want to punch someone. Look, this isn't his best pitch. He's done better stuff. Things that will hang with you longer. Stories that were a bit more dynamic. But still, reading this Dimestore Dostoevsky is going to bend you no matter how this book measures "L'enfer, c'est les autres" - Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit There is only so much Jim Thompson one should read in a summer.
But still, reading this Dimestore Dostoevsky is going to bend you no matter how this book measures up to Thompson's other stuff. This novel reads like a linear, painful nervous breakdown. The women hurt and the money doesn't help. Money is damn slippery. It all becomes that much more complicated when you are beat down and a bit crazy to boot. Some people never get a lucky roll. Some people never catch an easy day. This book is for the poor, the misunderstood, the downtrodden. It is a book to remind those poor sons-of-bitches that not only could their lot be worse, but yeah baby, someday it most certainly WILL be worse.
This is the first Jim Thompson book I've read don't know why it took so long , but it was definitely an experience. The story starts out with a fairly simple and familiar noir plot, focusing on a door-to door salesman who gets smitten for a meek, but strangely attractive young woman, and hatches a plot to steal some dough from her aunt, who's a down-right deplorable old witch that pimps out her niece to everyone around town. But eventually, it evolves into this totally bizarre and unpredictable This is the first Jim Thompson book I've read don't know why it took so long , but it was definitely an experience.
But eventually, it evolves into this totally bizarre and unpredictable character-driven ride. I'm excited to get into his other novels! Any author that has the balls to write a line like the one below, is definitely one to get excited about: Dammit, I knew it!
From the first page you know this is Thompson at his best: All of a sudden something seemed to snap inside of my head. It was just like I wasn't anymore, like I'd just shriveled up and disappeared. And in my place there was nothing but a deep hole, a deep black hole, with a light shining down from the top. Whoa baby, this is Thompson firing on 5 cylinders with no brakes and a seized-up shock-absorber, black as pitch and writing from the heart, or as close to it as his sleazy choice of genre will allow.
Better still, that genre takes him places he maybe couldn't get otherwise - through some sordid, creepy acts of violence and scenes of dialogue reminiscent of Crime and Punishment in their potential double-meanings, which play on the paranoiac narrator's nerves to the point of near-insanity. For once, the 'dimestore Dostoevsky' appellation does not seem misplaced.
The self-justifying and self-pity is just about pitch-perfect too, as is the humble-pie act, which in Killer or Pop seems too self-conscious but here is so close to the line between conscious act and delusion that the narrator himself seems unsure whether to believe it or not. And this tightrope-walk between aware and otherwise may be the essence of Thompson's genius. There's a scene around the middle of Woman in which the narrator, Frank 'Dolly' Dillon, is suddenly confronted with a 'Where did you get that money?
A repeated line throughout this: Funny thing, in Killer he had the narrator bitch about contemporary fiction writers, about their propensity to dispense with grammar and get all experimental at the climaxes to their novels, yet this is exactly what he does here and to a lesser degree in Killer itself. Added to that a slightly hokey story-within-the-story device in which the narrator writes and rewrites an increasingly delusional autobiography is out of place here, yet works psychologically and thanks to the rapid-fire style of the whole manages not to offend.
In contrast, the slangy conversational style is brilliant - as good as just about anything I've read by Thompson or anyone else for that matter - some of it so hilarious that I would laugh out loud and shake my head in admiration for minutes after reading the choicest parts. So too the sex scenes: And when it comes down to it that's really the crux of this book, and why I think it is essential for an understanding of its author: Added to that, this is pulp , shamelessly so, and all the better for it. No pretensions to literary in-joking as in Killer in which the narrator, a deep thinker and bibliophile in the guise of a pea-brained yokel, seems almost like a scathing self-portrait of Thompson the literary master trapped in the body of a pulp writer ; nah, here it's just a street-talking over-reaching everyman on the road to ruin in an unnamed hellhole in middle America, and despite his cramming an impressive array of stylistic tricks into the delivery the mask never drops - we never catch Thompson drawing attention to himself.
Make no mistake, this is sordid. And even though the end will have you scratching your head it gets the point across, and at least suggests a satisfying hall-of-mirrors effect which, while a touch too 'experimental', is well within and somehow even emblematic of the pulp tradition to which it aspires.
Jeez, it's ridiculous, but gloriously, liberatingly so, especially when you remind yourself this is And remember, this is the guy that wrote Kubrick's Paths of Glory ; he's a seriously good writer in the old-fashioned sense. But something's come over him. This is pretty close to it. The man said I looked lonesome. And I had all kinds of company. All jumping up in front of me wherever I looked, all laughing and crying and singing in my mind. You pull a thread out of this and it'd fall apart. And there's loose threads here - plenty. But you wanna hear a howl from the throat of the 20th-century Proletarian pushed to breaking point by babes and booze and survival-of-the-fittest consumerism, you could do a lot worse.
The best kind - camouflaged. View all 4 comments. This is vintage Jim Thompson--a story filled with irredeemable characters and lots of sex, violence and alcohol. He drinks too hard and plays fast and loose with his company accounts. A parade of unsatisfactory women have passed through his life, all of them memorable only for the faults they displayed. And then Frank meets the beautiful Mona, a sexy young woman desperately in need of being rescued from This is vintage Jim Thompson--a story filled with irredeemable characters and lots of sex, violence and alcohol. And then Frank meets the beautiful Mona, a sexy young woman desperately in need of being rescued from the aunt who abuses her by trading Mona's favors rather than paying her bills.
Frank is immediately entranced and thinks that Mona might finally be the woman he's waited for. He's even more excited to learn that he might not only have Mona but a huge pile of money as well. And all he has to do to get both the girl and the cash is kill a couple of people who desperately deserve killing. But poor Frank doesn't know that he's wandered into Jim Thompson country and that things are probably not going to turn out well. Aug 31, Malum rated it it was amazing Shelves: A masterclass in noir, A Hell of a Woman delves into crime, paranoia, passion, and madness.
It also has some of my favorite noir tropes, such as a rude, no-nonsense protagonist and a metric ton of witty smart-mouthing. I remember buying this when Black Lizard first came out and the cover was laminated with an amazing cover by Nancy McGregor showing an insane Marilyn Monroe leering right at you in a darkened office. I read "A Hell Of A Woman" lying on a gurney pumping my plasma for book dough, and the transfusion didn't make my blood run cold, this awe I remember buying this when Black Lizard first came out and the cover was laminated with an amazing cover by Nancy McGregor showing an insane Marilyn Monroe leering right at you in a darkened office.
I read "A Hell Of A Woman" lying on a gurney pumping my plasma for book dough, and the transfusion didn't make my blood run cold, this awesome novel did. A credit shark named "Dolly" kills an old woman who holds her stuttering imbecile of a niece captive so he can play house with her. The climax to the book is unlike anything ever written and has to be read to be believed.
one hell of a (something or someone)
Nov 25, Carla Remy rated it really liked it Shelves: Good plot, good suspense. Displays Thompson's mastery of twisted perspective shifts. Kind of just sinks into a hellhole at the end, like a fair amount of his fiction does. In recent months, I seem to have stumbled into the project of reading in publication order the collected works the noirboiled greats. Thus, since beginning to read noir in an orderly way, I've read the first two novels of Charles Williams, the first three of Raymond Chandler, the first six or seven by Cornell Woolrich, etc.
At some point, I'll start with the first Jim Thompson book, and begin working my way through his canon in an orderly fashion, too, and when I reach and re Comment from At some point, I'll start with the first Jim Thompson book, and begin working my way through his canon in an orderly fashion, too, and when I reach and re-read my Thompson favorites, I will post comments about them. For now, I will just stick them in my Noir Hall of Fame. Comment upon second reading: Reading this novel for a second time was an interesting experience.
When I first read A Hell of a Woman more than 20 years ago, it floored me. I was completely unprepared for genre fiction from this era that was so unapologetically risky and experimental. I have reflexively put the novel in my Noir Top Ten ever since. Rereading it, I was expecting a masterpiece, but this change in expectation left me acutely aware of the novel's shortcomings.
To put it bluntly, the book is a mess. But this is where I am supposed to clarify that A Hell of a Woman is a groundbreaking mess that helped to pave the way for noir fiction to be taken seriously as art, right? I think I may need to read it again. A door to door salesman stumbles across a young woman being held captive against her will and used as a sex slave by an unassuming yet villainous older woman.
Offered the services of the sex slave as payment for goods he quickly turns down the offer one of his very few redeemable moments and sets out to free Mona. Of course, the cool thousand buck score sweetens the deal. Sure fire formula for a great book I despise people who don't accept responsibility for their actions, but somehow I forgive it in a Jim Thompson character.
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Frank Dillon is such a heel that I had to laugh at him. Crazy ass ending as usual I've never read anything like it, except Thompson. May 18, Deborah Sheldon rated it liked it. And me, I guess you know the kind I am. Thompson is something akin to a genre of his own.
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You know a great deal before you read a single sentence. You know you're going to shake your head in disbelief and surprise at the outrageous behavior and complete disregard of the moral code evidenced by a still-completely likable protagonist. You know you're going to find yourself laughing at things that in life would be horribly un-laughable. You know that at some point, you're jaw is going to hang open—your eyebrows elevated to the apex Thompson is something akin to a genre of his own. You know that at some point, you're jaw is going to hang open—your eyebrows elevated to the apex of their arch—and you will be agog.
And you know, this will not end well. It is not hard to imagine him with a hell of a woman. He deserves everything he gets, and doesn't get, but you can't help harboring tender feelings for him. In his own words, he's a "hard luck case. In Thompson's world, few do. His characters are in a hell of their own making, and redemption is not on the table. Occasionally, we meet a character who might make better choices, and who will not participate in the caper du jour—Dolly's wife, Joyce, in this case—but these people are interesting only to a point.
Divested of emotional content, they make good victims. Joyce is interesting in that even after she makes a break and leaves Dolly, she's not done. She comes back to try it again. She might have returned for love, but she stayed for love. Even innocence is no guarantee of safe passage. In this existence, it's damned near a liability.
Poor Mona lived the life of an abused innocent. Her evil grandmother sold Mona's lovely body for the price of beans and rice. Mona was exploited by everyone she'd ever known from day one. Why would Dolly be different?
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Because he talked a good game? Because the sleeping poet in his soul responded to the forlorn despair of the young and beautiful Mona? Because he really DID intend to take her away from all this? We almost think it might have been, and maybe. If not for all that money. And even if it seems that Dolly might have survived to catch an unlikely break on another day in another town, we can rest easy. It's only a matter of time.
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This is hell, after all, and they don't call it hell for nothing. Thompson doesn't seem to tell his readers everything, just enough for us to want to fill in the blanks between the lines, and the missing blocks in a passage of time. He tells the least amount he must convey for us to suss out the juicy details we need to delight in the irony, and revel in the satisfaction of an eventual comeuppance or two. Perhaps we readers of Thompson are in training to achieve the necessary objectivity with which to view ourselves through the story arc of our own lives.
I'm merely hoping to avoid gazing into the glass darkly, hoping to avoid awakening in a succession of bleary steel gray dawns in myriad fleabag flop houses in hell, myself, hoping to avoid desperate searches into dull and blackened mirrors, and seeing angry vengeful eyes peering back. That's the best part about reading Thompson. I don't have to live there. May 07, Michael Logan rated it liked it.
When I finished this book, it was a beautiful day in Rome. The birds were twittering, the sun was glinting through the trees and all seemed well with the world. Except I was reading a book by Jim Thompson. My word, that man was dark. I picked this Jim Thompson book off the shelf without expecting very much. Fortunately, it's just as strong as those aforementioned books, and if you're a Jim Thompson fan, I suggest you give this one a go.
The main character Frank "Dolly" Dillon is a pretty standard Thompson protagonist; he's ruthless, bibulous, hostile toward women, looking for an angle, and an un I picked this Jim Thompson book off the shelf without expecting very much. Tagged as american crime fiction , femme fatale , made into film , noir , salesman , unreliable narrator. Not the easiest thing to do. You are right that they do not seem repetitive, but I just took a little break and came up for air. He delves into black comedy pop and the tall tale Golden Gizmo. Glad you loved it, Guy, and I concur with your critical ranking completely.
Little mix-up with your titles in the top of this post, I think…. You have to wonder, how did he narrate and write up his own story after what he endures in the last page! It really sounds as as if he was able to always add another twist to his stories and I should finally get to this original writer. Just from your reviews so far I think I would like The Killer Inside Me best but this and the last one sound very good too. The language just hums along.
I have Thompsons at home unread but this is definitely going on the radar. How can I guess that??? He wanted to make a film version of Pop. Let me know if you understood it. Finally I got to the last Thompson on the shelf. What he does with the narration is very impressive, like you say. The end is really powerful. I was just thinking about Pop the other day and remembering how good it was. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account.
Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. His Futile Preoccupations …..
A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson
His current problem woman is his wife, Joyce: All it took was for us to move in. May 21, at 3: May 21, at 6: May 24, at 2: May 23, at 5: Little mix-up with your titles in the top of this post, I think… You have to wonder, how did he narrate and write up his own story after what he endures in the last page! May 21, at 5: May 21, at 7: May 26, at 6: Must go back and read the Savage Night review.