The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

by J. T. LeRoy

Hardcover, 2001

Status

Available

Call number

PS3562.E773H4 2001

Genres

Collections

Your library, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

Publication

Bloomsbury USA (2001), Edition: First U.S., Hardcover, 224 pages

Description

National Bestseller With a new foreword by Jeff Feuerzeig A timely reissue of the extraordinary stories by JT LeRoy/Laura Albert that won international acclaim, to be timed with the theatrical release of the documentary Author: The JT LeRoy Story. "A startling achievement."--Publishers Weekly This book of interconnected stories depicts the chaotic life of a young boy on the run with his teenage mother. When Sarah reclaims Jeremiah from his foster parents, he finds himself catapulted into her world of motels and truck stops, exposed to the abusive, exploitative men she encounters. As he learns to survive in this harrowing environment, Jeremiah also learns to love his mother, even as she descends into drug-fueled madness. Told in spare, lyrical prose, rich with imagination and dark humor, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things transforms the savagery of Jeremiah's world into an indelible experience of compassion. This special edition includes an additional seven stories, previously uncollected, by JT LeRoy, the literary persona of Laura Albert. … (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member realsupergirl

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.

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LibraryThing member CKmtl

Even at the height of the JT hoax, I didn't particularly care for 'The Heart is Deceitful...'

It's essentially 'Sarah', but with a sticker reading "Now with shitty foster homes!" There aren't many appreciable differences between the two characters. The differences that do exist (mostly the details

of various abuses) seem tacked on to stretch the premise of 'Sarah' into a new book.

The format nagged at me as well. The books bills itself as a collection of short stories, but the stories clearly are all part of the same narrative. It's not quite a novel either, as the would-be chapters are too disjointed.

Lastly, in retrospect, the book suffers from the same exploitative vibe as 'Sarah', brought on by Laura Albert's overly elaborate hoax.

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LibraryThing member stuckinabigbook

Extremely disturbing novel that was painful at times to read. But I mean that in a good way.

LibraryThing member addict

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 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

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LibraryThing member yorkjob

Regardless of how authenticity of the story, this is a great novel. It grabs you and thrashes your emotions around.

LibraryThing member KLmesoftly

Heart-wrenching, until one comes to the realization that it is entirely fictional. JT LeRoy doesn't exist; he's the invention of Laura Albert. Since the majority of this book's power comes from the perception that it is true (without that, I'm left wondering at the sick imagination of the author),

I'd have to encourage my friends to skip it.

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LibraryThing member mel-L-co0l-j

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 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.

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LibraryThing member PrincessPaulina

* 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.

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LibraryThing member ronjaymar

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 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.

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LibraryThing member Borrows-N-Wants

"I was not impressed with this book. The narrative is distracting, the author focuses more on shocking the reader than developing the story or characters, and the scenarios are so outlandish that it is hard to stay interested.

I picked up this book after watching the movie, and this is one of few

instances that I would actually recommend the movie over the book."

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LibraryThing member SadieBabie

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 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.

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