Customer Reviews

Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood

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We all know someone like the author, Hollis Gillespie. Outrageous, hilarious, living life to the fullest, ignorant of house cleaning behaviours, and more to the point someone who would be such a good friend! Hollis has depicted her life in a series of vignettes searching for a home to buy in Atlanta.
Hollis found the title of her book one day when she was driving, and almost ran over a man she didn't see. He yelled at her "You Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch!" *%$*%$ etc., and Hollis realized she had found the title of her book.

Hollis tells us of her life with her parents- a father who is an alcoholic and unable to maintain a steady job. Her mother,who had wanted to become a beautician, but became a weapons designer instead. Hollis, her brother and two sisters moved with her parents from job to job all over the country. It is in this manner that Hollis developed her pysche or what she calls one. She is a little off-center, a little too cute at times.

Hollis believes that one must live their life to the fullest- why go half-way, push the throttle. And that is exactly what she does. She moves to Greece to become a serious writer and has more funny and interesting experiences because she is so open to them. She used to love to drink and take a few drugs and to go to carnivals, and she did this with her friends. Daniel, Grant and Lary are a big part of this book- many of the subtle and not so subtle yarns are about these three men. Hollis is most herself it seems when she is using four letter words, and this may be off-putting if you don't understand the context.

Each autobiographical tale that composes this book does not seem to follow any order- unless random order is what you are seeking. Hollis is a regular commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered" and writes a column called "Mood Swing" in an Atlanta alternative weekly. Hollis writes well, and if the articles in this book followed some sort of series I would have found it more put together. As is, the book is well done and we understand a little better how Hollis has become the original she is. Highly recommended. prisrob

A friend of mine and fan of the author calls her the "potty-mouth of Creative Loafing", a title I suspect that would not displease her since her language is saltier than the peanuts her father ate to disguise his alcoholic's breath. In this loosely-connected string of essays-- Ms. Gillespie finally moves into her home in Capitol View in Atlanta and several of the essays lead up to that move-- she will make you laugh with her raucous humor, marvel at her uncanny ability to coin new phrases (housework impaired,for instance) and identify with the universality of her sense of loss and sorrow. While the essays are chockfull of sailor vocabulary, many of them end in sorrow for lost oportunities. Ms. Gillespie's alcoholic father died alone and she blew a chance to be with him, for example. And she could have been kinder to him by pretending to like the cooking he did for her and her brother and sisters: "Looking back, I wish we could have pretended we liked some of his meals, but when you're young your weapon is honesty, which is perhaps the most merciless of them all." I would have liked to have known her parents, particularly her mother, an atheist who built bombs for the government, but who, on her deathbed, said that her greatest regret in life was asking for a bicycle for Christmas as a little girl, knowing full well that her parents could not afford to buy her one. Gillespie has aptly named this chapter about her mother, "Jesus Loves Atheists." There are many other essays like this here that will warm your heart.

As I "frolicked through the ottomiss" of these essays--Gillespie's childhood misunderstanding of the words of "Puff, the Magic Dragon"-- two thoughts kept popping up in my brain: (1) which of these essays does Ms. Gillespie select to read aloud at signings and (2) that her parents would be proud of her if they could read this book.

I read this book for all the wrong reasons, and you probably will, too. The cover is colorful and cheerful. There are photos of the author, Hollis Gillespie, making silly faces on many of the pages. The reviews compare Gillespie to Erma Bombeck. The author bio says she is a flight attendant and language specialist, jobs that lend themselves to comedy routines. In short, this looked like a quick, funny book.

Gillespie is no Erma Bombeck. I like Erma Bombeck, but Gillespie is better.

When Gillespie wants to be funny, she can leave you hiccuping with laughter. Her chapter on a trip to X-rated Amsterdam with her family and another on her adventures as a bad translator are priceless.

But most of the time, Gillespie is talking about her offbeat friends and downscale neighborhood, or about her unconventional childhood and her, um, eccentric parents. If she were inclined to dwell on how she was denied a normal childhood (whatever that is) and blame her parents for their faults, she would have plenty of ammunition. Instead, she refuses to be the victim. She looks back on the mistakes her parents made and seems to understand.

The essays in BHHB are very short, most are only two pages. What Gillespie manages to pack into these short pieces is amazing. Gillespie is like one of those artists who paints a few strokes and you think, well, that wasn't much, but then you realize how much those few strokes reveal. The genius is in knowing when to quit and to let the viewer, or reader, fill in the blanks.

So if the kicky title, the irreverent design, the promise of a laugh riot pull you into reading this, fine. You will not be disappointed. And you'll get a lot more besides.

"Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales From A Bad Neighborhood" is probably the best title so far this year. And, unlike with many books, the contents live up to it. Writer/NPR commentator/translator/airline attendant Hollis Gillespie shares nuggets of her life (and razor-edged wisdom) in this offbeat, zany memoir.

Gillespie draws readers into her life, past and present: Her three best pals are Lary (who offers to shoot her sometimes), Daniel (a likably weird artist) and Grant (gay bartender/seller of porno-religious signs made by an angry ex-nun). She struggles with horrible bleach jobs, jars of teeth, imperfect German ("It would please me greatly to purchase medicine for my fluid nostrils"), and Myrtle the lesbian ghost.

She suffers the world's least dignified mugging, a visit to the Amsterdam red light district (rubber fists?), and the question of whether she flashed people when she was soused. At the same time, Gillespie deals with more touching topics. As the daughter of an alcoholic trailor-salesman and a kleptomaniac bomb-making mom who wanted to be a beautician, she describes her family's trials and distances, one of the last visits to her terminally ill mother, and how her young niece was hospitalized.

"Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch" veers between wacky and touching, past and present. Gillespie's stories are less like a memoir or autobiography than like a collection of columns, loosely strung together. She also has the unique knack of being able to take little experiences, ramble about them in an engaging way, and wrap it up without losing her way.

Gillespie comes across as real and a bit twisted, like the zany pal of yours who lives down the street. Life keeps swinging at her, and she keeps dodging. Her tone is honest, endearingly self-deprecating, with a dose of sarcasm to keep her observations sharp. Backing her up are her likably eccentric pals, who serve as her partners in crime (translation: in ear-piercing and drinking).

Funny and poignant and strange, "Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch" is a unique look at a witty woman who tells us of her personal storms. Wickedly delicious and highly recommended.

Unapologetic bleached-blond flight attendant (I can just imagine her sassy repartee as she holds the mic on a plane that's just come down to a bouncy landing in SFO - does she work for Southwest?) and NPR commentator Gillespie dishes up to readers much more than "coffee, tea, or milk." She delivers humor, one-liner after one-liner, cameos of an assortment of her outrageous friends of all possible sexual genders, and chronicles of her lifetime of hilarity.
Some refer to this book as a memoir, but I can't see how anyone could make that label stick. There's no through line, no sense of logical progression from beginning to end, no real character growth. Gillespie is Gillespie at the beginning, and she's the same Gillespie at the end of this 279-page ride - but still, it's a fun ride.
This is a perfect book to leave on the bathroom counter for a few days. The chapters are short, short, short, probably designed to be read aloud on a quickie NPR spot of 2-3 minutes duration. Each is complete within itself, so it's easy to put the book down at chapter's end. The next time you pick it up, you'll probably flip through and begin reading at a different section altogether.
This totally irreverent (the title might give you a clue that the author is not a disciple of the religion of Political Correctness), raunchy, bawdy, silly, over-the-top collection of essay-ettes provides lots of giggles and a few moments of honest epiphany.

Hollis Gillespie is one of the funniest, wittiest, brightest writers around. BLEACHY-HIRED HONKY BITCH: TALES FROM A BAD NEIGHBORHOOD reads like hearing a standup comedienne play to an audience for all its worth. Though I have never heard her on her gigs as NPR commentator on "All Things Considered" or read her "Mood Swing" column for Atlanta's CREATIVE LOAFING weekly, I am in awe of her craftsmanship with words, her outrageous analogies and metaphors, and her ability to find humor in the most mundane of circumstances and events. Yet despite the corrosive title, Gillespie does not come across as a weirdo to be avoided at all costs: if all that she writes is based on truth then she has to be one of the most endearing friends and observers around. Perhaps this richness of material comes from the fact that in addition to her 'cultural side' as an NPR commentator, she actually is a flight attendant and a linguist, so put all that background together and the sky is not even the limit for this talented writer's imagination. She peoples her 'memoirs' with friends (gay Brian and Grant whose own lives are rich in hilarity, Lary who is looney and plies her with drugs, her rocket scientist mother - who dreams of being a beautician! - and alcoholic ne're-do-well trailer salesman father, and her brothers and sisters who provide material from her incredibly weird childhood to her normalcy-challenged adulthood. The book is an easy read: chapters are rarely more than two or three pages and peppered with photos of her friends and family. Because of the nature of the layout of the book, it is a terrific traveling companion or bedside icon for chuckling the day's troubles away before sleep.
I'd like to see Gillespie write a full-fledged novel, so keen is her word craftsmanship. Examples: "I never had a pussy-pet dog. Once I temporarily inherited two Labradors named Gracie and Amber. They were sisters, and both of them were the most comical, slobbery, eye-booger encrusted, walking wads of psoriasis you ever saw. Having birthed three litters, they each had hefty leftover dugs that dangled from their underbellies like big balls of soft warm dough. Amber had a problem with her left ear too, which occasionally swelled up like an eggplant and stuck straight out from her skull, making her look like she had a furry party balloon taped to her head. etc." and "There must be something really wrong with the world when you can't get a buzz off your codeine cough medicine. Christ if that doesn't just suck all the fun out of being sick." You get the picture.
If there are episodes of repeated information, read them like reminders of some of the previous laughs in the book. Oddly, too, for a book format such as this, the quickie memoirs hang together with clever continuity: Gillespie usually sums up each short remembrance with an introspective bit of tenderness. This is a refreshing, well-written bit of welcome satire of our world "and welcome to it!"

Hollis Gillespie is a modern-day...I can't even come up with a comparison. She is hysterical, and above all things, honest; at times, poignant, painful. The books are essay format, much like her column in Atlanta's Creative Loafing: collections of musings, incidents, and anecdotes from her colorful life. Her books celebrate life, friendship, and dysfunction, out loud, in the midst of cold, hard reality, as if to say: Everybody is broken, but somehow, if you find the pieces of yourself in other broken people out there in the Big World, you'll still be dysfunctional, but you just might be all right.

Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch, the psuedonym by which she is known in her edgy, crack neighborhood (the price was right), is about finding her place in the world, and buying her first home in an up-and-coming (although not nearly fast enough) intown neighborhood in South Atlanta. She introduces her best friends, Grant, Lary, and Daniel, and relates their eccentric misadventures and relationships. She is brutally honest about her itinerant past, the broken dreams and dysfunction of her parents, an alcoholic traveling trailer salesman (Dad) and a bomb-building rocket scientist/hippie artist (Mom), who carted her and her siblings all over the world. In Atlanta, as an adult, she finds family in her collection of misfit friends, settles down, buys her first home...and continues her outrageous tales of life in her second book, Confessions of a Recovering Slut & Other Love Stories. (Buy them together!)

Sherri Caldwell, co-author, The Rebel Housewife Rules: To Heck With Domestic Bliss!

Hollis Gillespie claims she's "ripped the hell off " out of her favorite writers, Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen, David Sedaris (to name a few of my favorites as well) but I found her work to be hilariously original and enjoyed spending a few days of reading alone and often out load to appreciative listeners from *Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch.* At the conclusion of each piece, I found it was difficult to stop reading. I wanted more.

She is honest, unique, laugh-out-loud funny, raunchy and ... sweet. There is a tender side blended into the series, particularly when she writes about her father and other family members. A piece entitled "One of Those Nights," about the night she learned her young niece was in a serious accident, was quite poignant.

On the other end of the scale, the funny "Born Again Booze Weenie," a tale of a talking liver, is alone worth the price of the book.

This book created a fan out of me. I'll look for work to come. Thanks!

From the author of "I'm Living Your Dream Life," and "The Things I Wish I'd Said," McKenna Publishing Group

Sadly I knew not of Hollis Gillespie until I happened upon a taping of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno while vacationing in Los Angeles. She happened to be on the show, and from the moment she spoke, I knew that I was going to have to pick up her book.

Well, I did, and I consider myself very lucky that I happened upon that taping. Her words are like a Ginsu knife, with a lifetime guarantee of being sharp. She's so honest with her past it's almost painful (in a good way.. if that makes sense. And no, I'm not into BDSM).

Hollis has this amazing ability to start out writing on an idea, expand upon it to the point where you're wondering if she lost track, and then she wraps it up so beautifully. It's a rare talent that few authors posses, but all desire.

I find this book amazing, and I find Hollis to be a remarkable woman who has overcome obstacles and still come out strong.

The title and the author photo spurred me to buy this book (that should tell you something about me) without knowing anything about Ms. Gilespie or her work. Thank God I did because I don't know when I've enjoyed a book more.

Ms. Gillespie reminds me of David Sedaris in that she has an interesting past, an engaging and very funny sensibility, and each story brilliantly blends an undercurrent of sweetness and poignancy with the humor. I think Sedaris fans will like Hollis' work as well.

Gillespie is a genius at being authentic and funny and with tying together Life's insanity and beauty. If all this makes the book sound mawkish then I'm being misleading because while I was moved, mostly I was vastly entertained. I even laughed out loud in parts which I promise you I NEVER do.

I worship you Hollis!

So buy the book already!