Confessions of a Recovering Slut: And Other Love Stories - Hardcover

Gillespie, Hollis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060562072 ISBN 13: 9780060562076

Publisher: William Morrow, 2005

Synopsis

Confessions of a Recovering Slut is the hilarious and often heartrending sequel to Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch, which concludes with Hollis Gillespie, the daughter of a missile scientist and an alcoholic traveling trailer salesman, at last finding a home of her own. Unfortunately that home just happens to be in one of Atlanta's most dangerous crack neighborhoods—but the place is bound to improve, right?

Wrong. Gillespie is plagued by missing human torsos, murdered policemen, and a drug dealer who keeps setting fire to her neighbor's house—and all this after Hollis discovers that she is inexplicably (except, maybe, for all that acrobatic sex) pregnant. While the neighborhood might have been fine when she was a child-free urban pioneer, it's a nightmare for a mother with nothing but cake pans to bulletproof the baby's room. Gillespie must depend on her three best friends, Daniel, Grant, and Lary, to help her—although Lary makes it no secret that he hopes the paint fumes she inhaled early in her pregnancy will cause the baby to be born inside out—"that way it'll be easier to sell for parts."

"Will Gillespie ever feel safe? No matter, she's still Hollis at heart—and, as Lary points out, if not safe, at least "safe from ever being normal."  

About this title

About the Author:

Hollis Gillespie, a Writer's Digest Breakout Author of the Year, is a regular commentator on NPR's All Things Considered, the award-winning writer of "Mood Swing," a humor column published in Creative Loafing, Atlanta's major alternative weekly, and author of "The Ugly American," a travel column for Paste magazine. Also the author of Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch, which Vanity Fair called "rib-crackingly funny," she lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with two cats, an incontinent pit bull, and her six-year-old daughter.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Gillespie's knack for keeping questionable company is rivaled only by her ability to write about it in hilarious, often heartbreaking detail. In this follow-up to her 2004 memoir, Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch, the NPR commentator (and daughter of a missile scientist and alcoholic traveling salesman) once again mines the rocky road of her life to render rubies of truth. The difference this time around is that Gillespie, a flight attendant who lives in one of Atlanta's most dangerous crack neighborhoods, is pregnant. How can she raise daughter Milly on a block where cops are gunned down by clerics, severed heads are found in plastic sacks, and the corner drug dealer regularly sets fire to her neighbor's house? Like the rest of us, she turns to her friends for help, including Grant, a gay bartender with a beehive hairdo and a collection of religious kitsch, and crusty but lovable Lary, who "from the neck up looks exactly like Einstein's insane bastard son." Gillespie's prickly descriptions of pregnancy are priceless: "I feel like a walking trash bag full of pig fat." Being a single mother may have mellowed her a bit, but Gillespie's perspective remains deliciously demented and endearingly askew. Allison Block
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About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0060562072
• ISBN 13: 9780060562076
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272