The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things [Hardcover]

J. T. LeRoy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 2001

The extraordinary stories that brought the author a cult following at the age of sixteen.
Circulated copies of LeRoy's handwritten notebook pages brought early attention to the then unpublished author. In print for the first time, these loosely connected autobiographical stories describe the harrowing experiences of a young boy's life on the run. From the heartbreaking "Meteor," where he struggles for the attention of his wandering mother, to the paranoia of "Coal"-'Whenever things feel out of control I know the black coal is doing it, and I know what to do, my mom taught me'-to living on the streets of San Francisco in "Natoma Street," JT LeRoy's voice is as lyrical and nuanced as the readers of his acclaimed debut novel Sarah have come to expect. Fresh, raw, and absolutely unforgettable, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things is sure to establish LeRoy as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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. (June)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The stories collected in this volume by cult writer LeRoy, whose debut novel Sarah was published to critical acclaim, constitute a picaresque memoir set mainly in the urban underbelly of San Francisco. The author's challenge here is to extract something fresh from a terrain so familiar that it is a well-established microgenre, yet it's difficult to assess how well LeRoy succeeds, since one's judgment is inevitably skewed by the presentation of these stories as autobiographical. On the other hand, given how well LeRoy fulfils the ground rules of his narrative, its documentary value might be beside the point. This is the kind of work that gets described as "raw" and "honest," and while it certainly occupies a niche in the literary market, it's hard to imagine that this particular example is essential in any but the most comprehensive collections. Philip Santo, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; First U.S. edition (June 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582341427
• ISBN-13: 978-1582341422
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (99 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,777,930 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Objective Eye, February 19, 2006

By 

Finton Ameroy (Castro) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (Paperback)

I approached this volume of stories desiring not to be swayed by the current tides of public condemnation, which shouldn't really matter in terms of fiction anyway. Nevertheless, I can honestly say that it isn't importnat who wrote this book. Leroy or Albert, it's still a stinker, and a grand stinker at that. Perhaps now the dialogue should turn toward why so many were willing to praise this book in the first place, because the story, writing, and talent behind these stories is as transparent and meaningful and unique as cotton candy.

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars you don't exist!, January 10, 2006

By 

jolene siana "author of Go Ask Ogre" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (Paperback)

What an incredible disappointment to see such personally revealing writing turn out to be a scandal. I know people who have been personally affected by J T Leroy's writing and have "corresponded" with someone, who we now know, does not even exist. I don't feel that the hoax is brilliant in any way.

I have a lot of people reaching out to me because of Go Ask Ogre and they have confided very personal things to me by way of land mail and email. My book has only been out for 6 months so I can't even imagine how many people have reached out to J T Leroy. I think it's a very messed up thing. I have no respect for liars, even crafty ones.

30 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars scratching my head now that the hype has been squashed, October 28, 2005

By 

Tom "avid reader" (Stillwater, OK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (Paperback)

Okay, I always figured there was something suspect about Leroy's background. Now with the cat out of the bag, I have to confess that there's something about the writing that will perplex me for a while to come: When I believed SARAH, HAROLD'S END, and HEART were written by a young wunderkind with a heartbreaking past, I allowed myself to forgive much about the writing that seemed forced, over the top, and just downright questionable. Now that it's been revealed the writing comes from a 30-something woman who opted against the understandable use of a moniker and decided to pass Leroy off as real (ten points for the marketing coup, but minus fifty points for manipulating so many of us who felt real empathy for your invention), I just can't take this writing seriously anymore. Instead of coming off as the creative purging of a painful childhood, it now just reads like what it has become: the ramblings of someone who never was a child prostitute, never an addict, and never lived the life she is writing about and claiming to be real.

Perhaps J.T. is the product of a troubled woman with multiple personalities, and if that's the case there's at least a couple of more books she can write about along those lines.

Anyway, I'm very sorry to learn about Leroy being hoax. And, yes, it does make difference for how I feel about the writing.