The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

LeRoy rose to considerable notoriety as the teenaged author of last year's Sarah, a novel about a gender-confused kid whose mother is a truckers' prostitute. In his latest work, a rawly written, riveting series of 10 interlocked stories that read fluidly as a novel, LeRoy returns to the themes of guilt and sin in the first-person voice of a boy so viciously abused by his caretakers that he is left with barely a sense of his own identity. Jeremiah is a child nobody wants, and he passes swiftly from foster parents to his angry and vindictive teenaged mother, Sarah, to his fanatically Evangelical grandparents. Sarah, herself badly wounded by her punishing, Bible-obsessed parents, gave birth to the boy when she was only 14; she returns at show more 18 to claim him. "Nobody takes what's mine," spouts the foul-mouthed, pill-popping, paranoid young woman. It's soon clear that Sarah cares nothing for her son, who becomes an unwelcome tagalong on her transient cross-country misadventures in hooking louche sugar daddies, stripping, turning tricks for truckers and cooking up explosive "crystal" in one boyfriend's cellar. The boy, who begins to crave Sarah's punishment as a way of keeping his life in balance, is frequently whipped for bed-wetting and is raped by her unsavory boyfriends; his denial of his sexuality becomes a pathetic attempt to identify with his tormentor. LeRoy depicts his ill-begotten characters as tenderly as Jean Genet, and delineates their acts of sadism and self-mutilation as unsparingly as A.M. Homes. Yet the stories resist spiraling into mere sensationalism. While Sarah becomes almost cartoonish in her savagery, the characters of the trucker child prostitute Milkshake and the lumbering biker Buddy are poignantly understated. Jeremiah, conflicted, emotionally bled but never self-pitying or defeated, elicits a gratifying sympathy. LeRoy's work is a startling achievement in his accelerating mastery of the literary form show less

I didn't really care about the whole drama surrounding JT Leroy when I read this, about whether he really existed or was a made up character (which it now turns out "he" was) in turn writing works of fiction based on a life which is also a work of fiction... I still don't care that JT didn't actually exist - it doesn't take away from the writing or the story in my eyes. Perhaps it displays even more storytelling talent on the author's part?

I found "The Heart..." to be more realistic than "Sarah" was, there was no away-with-the-fairies stuff, apart from incidents which you are made aware are the delusions of the characters rather than something the reader has to suspend belief in. I liked the way it kind of jumped about in places, and show more you had to keep reading for it all to make sense. I do enjoy stories like that, which reward you for reading on and putting some thought into the words as you take them in. And again, as in "Sarah", its written perfectly from the point-of-view of the child narrator, with wonderful child-like interpretations of the adult world, especially the crystal meth part. Its a dark and dirty book too, one that makes you feel unease and real emotion as you read it. LeRoy has a voice that weaves intriguing stories, but stories which still leave room for your own diagnosis. show less

* NO Spoilers were used in the writing of this review! *

An example of a depressing book that is worth reading because of the sharp, insightful writing.

Despite the disturbing subject matter I was compelled to finish this book, much as people are often compelled to stare at a traffic accident.

The subject and characters are memorable, though this is often an emotionally trying read.

En hemsk och tragisk bok som har jämförts med pojken som kallades Det, men med den stora skillnad att språket och sättet den är skriven på är mycket bättre. En tunn bok men ändå så tung. : En oälskad pojke uppvuxen på gatan med sin nerknarkade och psykisk störda mamma. Uppföljaren till boken Sarah .

I would love to give a review of this book. How truly intense, emotional, hard (for lack of a better word), tear-jerking, and at times stoic.

However, the title of the book itself seems a bit too ironic. {[SPOILER ALERT]}

As a practice, I avoid reading large amounts of reviews on books (amazon can usually convince me to read more than I would like). The back cover, the title, the book cover (art). These are a few of my favorite things, to judge a book…

Therefore, this book really intrigued me (and it didn’t help that I put it into my librarything and was told I would probably like it a lot).

This book is very interestingly written. The narrator is in young adolescent stages and we follow him (who sometimes wants to be a her) and he show more develops. This book gives, what I truly believe, an account of what it would be like to be beaten, abused, or sexually molested within a societal context that tells me…This is the norm…This is what happens….and (worst of all) this is what is good.

If you can handle the graphic sexual encounters, and are into Palahniuk-esque writing. It is a manageable read.

As I told a friend of mine, this is the first, and maybe the last, of the books that I would not allow my children to read until they were of a certain age…or, more importantly…of a certain mental and emotional capacity.

NC-17 scoffers aside. This shit is real (or so it seems). The book reads as a memoir, but is actually entirely fictional. I finished the book a month ago and was unaware of the truth of this until today. It doesn’t help that I am reading this book and it is actual the sequel to another book…which makes it seem even more like a real, true, non-fictional memoir.

What is truly telling about the book, is that it is written in stream of consciousness. It draws you in, and doesn’t let you go. The novel is fiction and does not claim to be anything else, so to that extent I guess my being aggravated about the authorship is a little unnecessary. The sheer intensity and graphic detail almost make you want to believe it is true.

I gave it 3-stars…maybe that was too few….maybe that was too many. Overall, it is definitely something you only read if you can handle it. I don’t think it will make your life better or worse to trudge, suffer, and struggle through. show less

i understand the lackluster reviews on this book, though i don't agree with the average score of 2.25 on Amazon. sure, it's oft-unbelievable, as well as over-the-top in trying to initiate our gag reflexes. also, it's pretty much been done before (had this been published in the mid-90s, amidst the hip, sexually-charged film noir of that time period, it would've been ground-breaking). still, i enjoyed the unflinching attention to the sexual abuse that occurs between members of the same gender; we're intentionally left wondering if this contributed to, or caused, the protagonist's masochistic homosexuality. it made me, a heterosexual, remember that "typical" abuse, that of one gender by its opposite, is anything but exclusive.

if you love show more dark, disturbing, gritty horror dealing with human monsters, you'll dig this book. while it's not essential reading, it's a disgusting ride -- impossible to look away. just don't roll your eyes too hard when you realize that "JT Leroy" is attempting to make us believe this happened to "him" -- they might stick that way. show less

Well, despite all the hoopla about who the author really is, this is a really well-written book about a boy who is perceived as a girl, abused as a girl, and often identifies as a girl. It is written in nonlinear, stream-of-consciousness format which makes it very compelling. It kind of sucks you in.

Personally, I don't care whether the author is transgendered or not. Personally, I don't care whether the author survived horrific abuse or not. The back of the cover lists this book as fiction. JT Leroy has no mandate saying the book has to be anything other than fiction, and as a work of fiction it is pretty damn good.