The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems

Introduction

On my walks where I live, I pass a house that has a book exchange cabinet (and a cat), which I kept meaning to drop some books into. I finally did and saw a slim volume that looked very interesting, which is the subject of this review.

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

This book by the Canadian Michael Ondaatje draws on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his prodigious fund of empathy and imagination, only a hundred pages but like nothing I have read before.

Its form is almost like a scrapbook, part diary. part poetry, part prose but it describes itself as a novel. Here are some pages from the book:

It is an interesting read, violent and sexual, and the pages veer between being full of text to being empty of text. The nearest equivalent I can think of is "taRaNtula" by Bob Dylan but the two books are totally different.

It is only 105 pages so I will be finished before the weekend but I will investigate the author further.

Conclusion

Can I recommend this book? I am glad that I have found it but others may find it not exactly their cup of coffee

It won't be going back to the book exchange cabinet that it came from though.

This is also for Sarah Parker's "Calling All Bookworms" Challenge which you can read about here: