BOOKS: Hollis Gillespie (Titles Inappropriate!!)

You know a great book when you turn the last page and close the cover, and you're actually sad--bereft, even--that it's over. It's like one of those short-term, highly intense relationships in high school or college, where you discover a soul mate, spend all your time together, quickly learn all there is to know--and you still want more. I'm already missing my new BFF (even if she has no idea)(and this might make me a stalker?), after spending time almost every day for the last two weeks with Hollis Gillespie in her wild, wacky, wonderful world:

Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch:
Tales From a BAD Neighborhood
(ReganBooks, 2004)

Confessions of a Recovering Slut
& Other Love Stories
(ReganBooks, 2005)

I met Hollis recently, briefly, at a book signing in my new favorite Barnes & Noble at Edgewood (Hi, Paul!), and she was just as retro-fabulous, funny, irreverent, and outspoken as she is in her books; in her weekly Mood Swing column in Creative Loafing, Atlanta's major alternative weekly newspaper; and, I'm sure, on NPR's All Things Considered. Although how she landed THAT gig, I can't imagine--my god, the language! The drugs & alcohol & irresponsible sex! The gay thing! (She is not, but 2 out of 3 of her best friends are, so she tends to embrace the lifestyle.) The outspoken truth, self-analysis, and stark, raving confession of past, present, and future--it's a lot for a fairly conservative audience. (I could be wrong about NPR, I admit I am not a regular listener.)

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 Creative Loafing column: collections of musings, incidents, and anecdotes from her colorful life. Both 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 right 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, and buys her first home...

And then she ends up pregnant. Which is the basis of Confessions of a Recovering Slut: pregnancy, single parenting, facing fears and the future, more friendship, and finding a new house in a safer neighborhood.

At the Atlanta book signing, Hollis said there was one more book coming in her "Bitch/Slut/Whore" series: Air Whore, which will be about her adventures and experiences as a flight attendant for Delta Airlines. She is also an international foreign language translator--the girl is no slacker. Whore would be the final book in the series, because, as she said, it would be time to turn to fiction--there simply wouldn't be anything left to mine from real life with her friends or from her childhood. Rumor has it, she's currently working with Hollywood on a television series based on her books. All I can say, from the jealous heart of a fellow writer: You GO, Girl!!!

Visit the lucky Bitch/Slut/Whore (self-described, remember!)--and see her kibitzing with Jay Leno!--online at www.HollisGillespie.com.