Reviews
"As a survivor of throat cancer (not to mention four decades in an industry notorious for chewing up and spitting out fresh talent), [Val Kilmer] genuinely seems grateful for the opportunity to look back on his life, loves, and career...Kilmer shows great vulnerability and a knack for storytelling... I'm Your Huckleberry is most engrossing, even illuminating, when the author actively tries to reconcile his vision and ego with his faith and regrets." --Danette Chavez, The A.V. Club "It's no surprise that Val Kilmer has some stories to tell. The actor has played such inimitable figures as Jim Morrison, Doc Holliday and Batman. He rocketed to superstardom in a fighter jet in Top Gun , parted the Red Sea as Moses in The Prince of Egypt and acted opposite his icon Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau . But those stories aren't even the most interesting parts of Kilmer's new memoir, I'm Your Huckleberry . In tender vignettes, the actor, 60, charts his life from birth to present day, writing with candor, vulnerability and sometimes regret about family, love, faith, financial problems and a waning acting career." --Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today "Val Kilmer leaves no stone left unturned in the excavation of his life. Confessions, poems and vignettes are peppered throughout his new memoir, I'm Your Huckleberry . Kilmer documents his life with candor and vulnerability from birth to his rise to stardom and waning acting career, including moments of love, loss and regret." --Wilson Wong, NBC News "After the movie star's 2015 throat cancer diagnosis and surgery, [Val Kilmer] writes that he sounds like 'Marlon Brando after a couple of bottles of tequila.' Kilmer adds: 'It isn't a frog in my throat. More like a buffalo.' That doesn't mean Kilmer, 60, is at a loss for words. When he asserts that picking up I'm Your Huckleberry is like slotting a couple of quarters into the 'pinball machine of my mind,' he is not overselling the experience. What follows is a zigzagging ride through Kilmer's distinctive life and career, penned by a spiritual storyteller with no qualms about indulging in his eccentricities...Kilmer's tone is raw and reflective as he weaves poems into his expressive prose. (He is a literary obsessive who admires Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Samuel Beckett, after all.) Crucially, he shows a willingness to analyze his own image. As far as Hollywood case studies go, Kilmer's career proves plenty worthy of deconstruction. 'Just as I am a composite of all my characters,' he writes, 'each character I've played is a composite of me.'...For Hollywood fanatics, Kilmer drops plenty of names and behind-the-scenes tidbits...There is something charming and disarming about a celebrity memoir that's willing to go off the rails. Rather than a carefully curated self-portrait, Kilmer offers a scatterbrained journey into his idiosyncratic head space. If this is the pinball machine of Kilmer's mind, you have to give it to him: He's playing by his own rules." --Thomas Floyd, The Washington Post
