Customer Reviews

The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I like to read debut books, so when I came across this one, I was intrigued. A gay boy in Texas abandoned by his Mother who is hell bent on snaggin' her a rich man. Daddy abandoned Mama & Mama's Boy one day while they were at Neiman Marcus having their hair done. They come back to the ranch (litterally) to discover that rich Daddy has taken off and left them penniless. Havoc wreaks. Mother looks like a cross between the Cuban T.V. host "Christina" and a Drag Queen- granted, a very well put together and handsomely coiffed drag queen- but let's call a shovel a shovel.
Meanwhile, her teen-aged drama princess of a gay son is left to fend basically on his own. Miraculously, he discovers musical theatre, meets the love of his life, escapes small town bigotry and ends up at Sarah Lawrence. Phew! That's a lot of memoir in less than 200 pages. I will give praise for Mr. Leleux nee' O'Doole's writing style- it is very good. Clearly the folks at Sarah L. taught him a thing or two about a thing or two. The story is angst-filled and chock-full-o-drama, pratfalls and very witty repartee. At one point I thought to myself, "What if 'Gone With The Wind' were set in the 1990s in Texas, and Scarlett was a gay teenaged boy?" Think "The Divine Secrets of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood" meets "Mommie Dearest" with a splash of "Auntie Mame" thrown in for flavor. Our little Sissy Mary does grow up, has an amazing support system about him and heads for the big city to make it after all. I liked that the central character actually figured out how to get what he wanted tempered with what he actually needed. I liked that he takes the reader along for the ride through out his ordeals. The best example of this drive is the Civics class story where the author is one class away from a high scholl diploma. The author sets his mind to getting the diploma and the hell out of his frightening Christian high school, fast. I loved the supporting characters who unconditionally accept and support our little starlet/ hero throught out his ordeal.
I can't give this a 5 Star rating because there were so many unanswered questions about the family dynamic; How the autorities freaked out over him living with his gay boyfriend while still in high scholl but looked the other way when his Mother and Father left him to his own devices (must be a Texas 'thing'?) and the end was a little to pat and abrupt. Good first effort. I will buy your second book.

Am I missing something here? His gaydom is almost a stereotype (getting his hair done and eating cucumber sandwiches with the ladies at Neiman Marcus every Saturday). His parents divorce when he is 16...not 4 or 5..16! Get a job and stop whining. Every person in the world is now capable of writing a memoir. Boring

Reading Robert Leleux's first novel, "The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy" is such a joy that one almost wants to visit Texas....well, visit, but not live there, maybe. His breezy style and cast of offbeat characters is as warm as his home state, with enough aromas to want more. It is terrific.

Leleux, whose book centers around his mother and his partner, accomplishes what many writers, especially young ones, fail to do. He keeps the focus largely on his family and friends, while allowing himself to remain just close enough for inclusion. Leleux has a penchant for creating sentences that start with a fact, add a comment and take another turn for a reaction to the comment. What the reader has, in the final analysis, is a book that shines. His humor radiates throughout and reading this in one sitting is very much suggested.

Like some novels, there are a few too many characters to muddy the waters without adding much heft to the story and if I had one criticism of this book, it would be that. But that's small potatoes compared to an otherwise brilliant endeavor on the part of Robert Leleux. I highly recommend "The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy" and hope he has another book in the works.

Unfortunately, I gave this book as a gift before I read it myself, based on a glowing review in The New York Times. Boy, was I wrong on this one. This is the worst example of what has become a growing trend of precocious gay boy memoirs that began with David Sedaris's essays, flourished with Augusten Burrough's book-length works Running with Scissors and Dry, turned amusing with Josh Kilmer-Purcell's I Am Not Myself These Days, and now thuds to ground with this entry. Someone should slap awake the editor at St. Martin's Press who acquired this memoir because the characters are vapid and the plot -- about a young gay man who feels abandoned by his father when he divorces his mother and seeks restitution and reconciliation in the form of money for college -- is too vengeful to be a positive role model for other gay teenagers. In fact, it's hard for me to be sympathetic at all towards Leleux because he writes about wanting to drop out of high school and avoid college when things don't go his way because his father won't pay his tuition. Leleux tries to be humorous and witty, but his character in the book comes off as a spoiled, bitter, know-it-all with a mean sense of entitlement. David Sedaris, in his essays, is something of a detached journalist, even as he is describing his own foibles. Burroughs becomes sympathetic because he writes as a confused young man and sketches out the plausible scenario that his parents might be clinically or mentally unstable. And Kilmer-Purcell has an outrageous drag queen story to tell. In this memoir, the young Leleux comes off as arrogant, conceited, and self-centered. You never feel any warmth from him or for him, and even on the rare occasion he has something sorta nice to about someone else, you feel he is saying it more about himself. Leleux is not Capote. Never will be. He's too shallow. For full disclosure, however, my friend who received this book from me as a gift liked it. In fact, he read it twice. Go figure.

Robert Leleux-- though born Robert O'Doole, he changed his last name legally to that of his lover Michael Leleux-- can certainly tell a funny story and is the master of the one-liner. Much of THE MEMOIRS OF A BEAUTIFUL BOY will make you smile, you may laugh out loud at times; on the other hand, all that glitters here is not gold. Parts of Robert's tale will make you sad. The author warns "the gentle reader" that the story often "reads better (as in funnier, or happier) than it was lived," and that he has changed or condensed "certain names, places, details, and dates." So what we have here apparently is a story not unlike where the sea and sky converge; we are left to our own devices as to what is real and what isn't.

To say that the characters-- particularly Leleux' mother Jessica is bigger than life is an understatement; but these people do live in Texas-- Petunia, a hundred miles north of Houston to be exact-- where nothing is life-size. When Robert's father leaves his wife and son for a pregnant girl friend, Jessica is 45 and Robert is 16. Suddenly left with dwindling funds, this mother and son-- the best of friends-- are left to their own devices as to how to survive. The only route that Jessica, who has more wigs than Dolly Parton, knows to take is the road that leads to a rich man, and she gives it all she has, even if it means hocking her jewels to pay for hair replacement-- well, sort of-- and lip and breast implants performed by a born-again surgeon.

Just as we get enough of the trials and tribulations of Jessica, who shares the same birthday, June 10, with Judy Garland and can booze it up-- her drug of choice is vodka-- at times like the over-the-rainbow diva, the author meets the twenty-five-year-old Michael Leleux, a darkly handsome dancer with dimples like those of Ava Gardner, along with his large and warm and accepting Cajun-French Catholic family. They make a nice contrast to the craziness of his mom-- even though he says the story of her life is his story-- and the Lyndon-Johnson-hating Republican as in his paternal grandfather.

When Robert falls instantly, madly in love with Michael, he feels obliged to come out to everyone about his sexual orientation; but the genie has long since been out of the bottle, or, as in that old Texas saying, he couldn't keep them dogs under the porch. His mom announces that she has known he was gay since the day he was born. His maternal grandmother simply asks him if he has read James Kirkwood's P. S. YOUR CAT IS DEAD. His grandfather opines that he would rather Robert have a man than a Yankee woman.

Now to the touching scene: Robert and his father, whom the writer describes as looking like an Oscar wearing a baseball cap, tall and bald, are finally reconciled after he has hated his dad for so long. Hearing his father's voice-- his words "filtered through Karo syrup"-- makes him weep. "Daddy had a way of co-opting our argument, of absorbing it through agreement. . . Daddy was Paper, and Mother was Scissors; she could always handle him. But even as a child, I had to hate Daddy from afar--because I aways chose rock and Daddy covered me every time."

You can finish memoir in short order. It goes down like a good souffle, light but delicious.

For those who believe the days of style, class, and wit are gone--boy are you in for a shocker! Robert Leleux, with the publication of The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, brilliantly reminds us of Noel Coward, Cole Porter, Truman Capote, Jessica Mitford and, yes, believe it or not, even the recently deceased (and fabulous Molly Ivins). His acerbic wit and flair for gallows humor enliven a painful story of adolescent discovery and, ultimately, of young-adult forgiveness. It was this aspect of the story which I found most fascinating. At the start of the book, after discovering the dear John letter his father left for he and his glamour-queen-Mama-Rose of a mother, Leleux, in spite of the abandonment, appears a less than sympathetic figure. However, by the end of the book, both Leleux and his mother (Jessica Wilson) manage to endear themselves to us by being, quite unabashedly, themselves. The two embrace their larger than life personalities and discover happiness, security and even husbands! For fans of Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris, this over the top, Texas coming of age story is a must read! In fact, I highly recommend it to EVERYONE who likes to laugh. Bravo!

Robert spent the first years of his life without knowing want, that is until his father walked out on his mother, leaving them virtually to fend for themselves. Not an easy plight for his mother, used to a life of ease and comfort, nor for Robert, who now has to contend with his mother's often extreme measures to find herself another rich husband before she looses her good looks, and all her hair.

Robert's memoirs of his childhood, his coming of age, and his finally meeting Michael, the love of his life make for a most entertaining read. He paints a vivid picture of his flamboyant mother, and it is clear he shares many of her traits; the only person to be surprised to learn that he is gay is Robert himself. He tell his story with great honesty and a humour that frequently verges on the hilarious. No one is safe from his often acerbic wit, including Robert himself.

As a first novel this bodes well for Robert's future as a writer, he writes with confidence and style.

I came upon this book at the Pulpwood Queens convention and started reading it on the plane ride home, laughing so hard my fellow passengers turned to stare. It is a hilarious coming of age gay story, set in recent Texas, filtered through the wry, sensitive, much put-upon Robert, whose sensibility is somewhere between Oscar Wilde and Truman Capote. The ham glazing stories had me in stitches and his utter inability to shock anyone with his coming out news just priceless (his grandmother's reply: Silence, then "well I thought we were pretty much working under that assumption already." The story has one narcissist mother, but many adorable and hilarious women friends, and one princely cajun.

It's an astounding first book, and is so full of twists and turns and flat commentary on modern life that I can't wait for volume two. It passed my Ultimate test: I read so much of it aloud to my husband that he says he doesn't even have to read it now. Worth reading again just for the second-found laughs. Bravo! Author! Double points for being sweet hearted. Whoever accused this book of being too self-centered is insane. This is a modern American man finding his own way.

I am not really sure if I liked this book or not. It seems obvious to me that this man still puts his mother up on a pedestal, but I have little more than disdain for her. Everything seems to be a constant joke and reason for high drama, I kept waiting for him to say what he really thought. This woman may not have been physically abusive, but she was so many other things.

And there was SO MUCH about his mother. What about him? What about his life? Was he always in the shadow of her? I've been told I can read more into a book than is really there, am I just imaging this?

Sigh, I dunno... unless you are a hardcore memoir reader, I might tell you to skip this one. I was a bit disappointed and felt it wasn't the whole story. Not that there's anything "wrong" with that, but I want to know why and I want it to add up. This one? Didn't.

I wish I could populate this review with the one-liners that had me laughing so loudly I irritated the cat. What is it about the South that produces such brilliant, colorful, witty, acerbic hothouse flowers? I have seen the names Sedaris and Sessums mentioned frequently in the reviews here. In my humble opinion, Mr. Leleux's style harkens back to Tennessee Williams and, as mentioned, Truman Capote in that he has taken a popular genre (the bitingly-funny-gay-coming-of-age-tale) and given it a transformative incandescence which places it in its own class. In a way, like Capote, he has re-invented a literary form -- Leleux gives his "characters" marvelous lines that we know were shaped by his ear. But we don't mind. It's not so much that what he writes is merely stylish, which it is. It's also that what he writes is really funny. Admitting that humor was the only way Leleux could deter childhood bullies, Leleux packs some serious flesh and muscle onto the bare bones of his story and, before we know it, cardboard characters we would not necessarily care about in real life are glittering, fascinating 3D comedians who are making us laugh out loud. In my humble opinion, few writers today possess the stylistic chops of Mr. Leleux which, when combined with his searing, acerbic humor, marks him as a writer to watch. And read.

5 Stars. Great read!