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Title: The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things by J. T. Leroy ISBN: 1582342113 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Pub. Date: June, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17
Rating: 5
Summary: A stunning, horrible, powerful, beautiful work
Comment: The other reviewers here are right on target. This is a beautiful, horrible book. It is a tale of a child seeking love and finding everything but. I suspect it is an autobiography. If 1/10 of the events described here actually happened to J. T. Leroy, my heart and soul ache for him. This is a vivid portrait of the sins of righteousness (organized religion and bible believers will NOT recommend this book); abuse of every genre (drug, sexual, child, physical, mental, incest, institutional, parental, grand-parental, etc.); the joys and twisted horrors of sex. The work is billed as "stories" but it reads like a novel, each tale painting a bleaker and more tragic portrait of the narrator.
I recommend this book for a variety of reasons: the paradoxical beauty of the writing; the drama, horror, trauma, tragedy, and emotion of its story; and the fact that like all great works of literature, it will touch you deeply.
I spent the day today reading this book. It is something that will play and replay in my mind for a long, long time. I'm boggled by the fact that a teenager wrote these stories, and I hope that cliches like "the resiliency of the human spirit" hold true for J. T. Leroy.
Rating: 5
Summary: An emotional landslide
Comment: Labels are often times erroneous or downright misleading. What JT LeRoy has brilliantly fashioned here is a horror story. No, not a horror story like those produced by Stephen King or Clive Barker, this is a horror story in that the subject matter is absolutely horrific. This is a savage and sobering series of interrelated stories dealing with the life long abuse suffered by a little boy named Jeremiah. Torture, pure and unadulterated. Mental, physical and sexual abuse are presented in a prose style which claims your attention like a brick through the front window. This is a shocking book on a variety of levels, the least of which is the subject matter. What is most shocking is the surety with which Mr. LeRoy writes. One would think that this material would almost assuredly repell its reader. However, the opposite is true. These stories grab on like a pit bull. Once you start, you simply must finish. That these pieces lack subtlety is only fitting. We aren't meant to be coddled or reassured by a Hollywood ending. I put the book down feeling drained and helpless. These are real horror stories. People actually live like this, treat one another like this, and the rest of the world looks away. Don't look away from this punishing, absorbing and challenging new book from one of the most exciting new writers of contemporary fiction.
Rating: 5
Summary: A brutally beautiful book.
Comment: Leroy's metaphors ring true without exception, not merely detailing images but nailing their meaning. The pacing shows good editing and good storytelling, never dawdling except to lay out how relentless are the sequences of growing up. Leroy indulges in descriptions of ordinary things from glowing doorbells to stray dogs but he never gives in to sentimentalism.
Some of these Amazon reviewers sound like they've never read other accounts of child abuse. Writers such as Dorothy Allison in Bastard Out of Carolina and Maya Angelou in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings have confessed secrets about how children yield to abuse and have itemized the surcharges of the strength it gives them. But Leroy stands out in the completeness of his childhood perspective and in the depth of his understanding the characters around him. He's trying to impress us not with the facts, which are indeed horrible, but with their significance. The reviewer who says the character Jeremiah is always looking for love and never finding it is on target but has oversimplified the problem. Leroy asks how to untangle loving from wanting to be loved. (Which is the same identity problem that the biblical Jeremiah confronts in the verse taken for the title.) You can relate to this problem even if it hasn't taken you so far towards your fears as it has Jeremiah. Leroy has loads to tell. Buy this book.
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Title: Sarah by J. T. LeRoy ISBN: 158234146X Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Pub. Date: June, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: My Loose Thread by Dennis Cooper ISBN: 1841952745 Publisher: Canongate Pub Ltd Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: TRY by Dennis Cooper ISBN: 080213338X Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: TWO GIRLS FAT AND THIN by Mary Gaitskill ISBN: 0684843129 Publisher: Scribner Paperback Fiction Pub. Date: February, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Period by Dennis Cooper ISBN: 0802137830 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 30 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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