Customer Reviews

Sarah: A Novel

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(52)

 

 

First off, as with the story collection, I'm giving SARAH two stars based solely on my reading of it and nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that J.T. Leroy is a hoax. I read it before the hoax came to light, and, like the collection, found it to be so poorly realized on so many levels that I was shocked by the praise and hype driving it along. As someone born and raised in the South, it became very obvious to me that "Mr. Leroy" wasn't from this part of the world but had created an entire fiction based on little else other than imagination. Unfortunately, the fabrications weren't very interesting to me. Now, of course, we know J.T. Leroy wasn't even a real person to begin with, so that only adds to my frustration to having been lured into this "autobiographical" account by reviewers who hailed it as truthful, painful, and wonderful.

Secondly, I've noticed that others who have posted reviews since the J.T. hoax have had their reviews removed from Amazon.com (at least 3 by my count). I find that very troubling, as it seems someone is trying to prevent the disappointment and anger many feel for having been duped from being heard. That form of censorship in order to keep an already dying myth afloat will only backfire.

For Laura Albert-the woman behind this whole myth-I urge you to own up to the fact that the hoax is done with and it had a very good run. Why you decided to invent J.T. in the first place, as well as other characters involved in his story, strikes me as ten times more interesting than what this ill-imagined collection offered. My advice to you is to retire "J.T." with some dignity and put yourself forward in as honest a manner as possible. You might be surprised how many of us would now be willing to listen to your story instead. Otherwise, I fear "J.T." is going to have a rough road ahead, because few are going to champion his story anymore (something that was much easier to do when we thought he was alive).

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.

Concerning J.T. Leroy and the fact of him being a mean hoax played on a whole bunch of people, many deserving to be fooled but many more not deserving it, I'm reminded of a few lyrics by Pete Townshend: "We forsake you/Gonna rape you/Let's forget you, better still." It sucks Leroy not being real, because for a while there he was almost worth it.

a little surprised to hear this guy was a hoax. no matter though because i'd already found him to be a joke but not a funny one. no one would've read this in the first place without the boywhore hype behind it. i read "sarah" for those reasons and felt really bad for this kid, but that's only because the story came off so so so dumb, the paper it was printed on was better put together, really.

so why does so many folks here think it's great? might have something to do with the faux-writer making up as many good reviews as possible and having the neg. ones deleted. my early review of "sarah" was axed almost as soon as I put it up here a few years ago. anyway, if 51% of america voted for an idiot like w. bush it shouldn't be too far a leap to expect so many to jump on jt's shaky bandwagon. i guess if there's hope for a pathetic boy (...) addict who can get a publishing deal there's hope for us. suckers are born every minute.

want some good fiction, read nabokov, delillo, gaitskill, o'connor, munro, or any number of newer writers who do their work without tricks so don't reap the attention they deserve...check l. berry, t. franklin, a. menendez, c. chieng...

support the really talented and leave this mess behind

As readers we've been lied to again. He doesn't exist. He never existed. And those of us who believed in him have been betrayed. Thanks a lot, JT, for making us think someone else felt the way I did instead of using my emotions as a means to pad their pocket and exploit their own need for literary/hipster cool "credibility." You'll pay in hell!

No, there's nothing remotely COOL or WONDERFUL about this kind of hoax. The issue isn't about a 40-year-old woman pretending to be a teenage boy, rather the issue is about a 40-year-old woman pretending to be a transgendered, HIV+, abused, drug addicted teenage boy--and then using that persona to gain access, success, and sympathy from others. Some might love that she fooled "the genius literary elite," but that speaks more about someone's own resentment toward those who've made honest names for themselves as writers, etc.

In truth, it speaks volumes about the writers, artists, publishers, editors, and others who went the extra mile to help a young man pull his life together and get his work published and read. There's nothing cynical about creative people doing that for a person (in fact, I'd argue it is admirable that they would go out of their to do so), but it is incredibly cynical and cruel to take advantage of those intentions. By doing so, Laura Albert has probably made it impossible for a real young person with real problems and real talent to be taken seriously by those who were duped. Her sins aren't in the books or the quality of the writing, but in her intentions to shortcut her success by co-opting the problems of others who rarely have a voice and by lying to those who would seek to help those people. And, of course, don't forget she then went to incredible lengths to discredit anyone or anything that sought to reveal the truth.
In other words, real abused children feel real pain, and stunts like this only serve to avert good intentions that should go to the right places.

So judge the books on the merit of the writing, if you want. But please remember the one unerring mark of a sociopath is, essentially, that they'll try to make you feel sorry for them even as they're screwing you over.

When I read Sarah for the first and only time, I
couldn't really believe what I read. It struck me as
such a badly realized book, cliche, unimaginative
language, aiming to be a dark and tragic story yet
failing on most levels, and written by someone who
never lived in the world they wrote about, certainly
not a young child who doesn't know anything else but a
calculating adult instead. The lack of true innocence
and the absence of truthfulness hit me very hard.

Later I learned about young JT Leroy being created by
the much older Laura Albert, and it just confirmed
what I understood from reading the book, this is
written by someone who has sought to use and exploit
the relationship between parent and child in a very
twisted and cruel manner, cheapening such an important
bond, a bond also made with readers who fell hook,
line, and sinker for Mrs. Albert's stab at celebrity
via her unreal creation of J.T. Having worked with
kids in danger, I'm fully aware of how adults will
sometimes manipulate and use them to get what they
want, and this writer and book is no different.

This is a mean joke of a book, the others written by Leroy
are also just like it, with Sarah being where the
manipulation and fakery began.

JT Leroy is a hoax, and, regardless of what others
might suggest, the hoax matters because it uses
serious situations and serious problems as a means to
inflate its own wrongly conceived importance. In
other words, it has used the persona of a street child
not as a way to help others but, instead, as a way to
use others in order to achieve it's authors goals of
control and success: the author being a middle-aged
woman who never lived on the streets or had the life
she claims is J.T.s. If J.T. had really existed he
would likely be disgusted by this sort of "literary" abuse.

Actually, I find the argument that these books should be judged simply on their own terms to be absurd, especially since the fabrication of JT Leroy was used to lure readers to the books in the first place. In other words, the books are fiction but the marketing device to get us to read them was a lie, pure and simple. So that's how these writings by Laura Albert should be understood--not as stand-alone works of fiction but as a marketing tool to fool the public into buying them. If the hoax of JT Leroy shouldn't matter in regard to the books than why, I wonder, was it used in the first place?

Poor writing--not least due to its outrageous inauthenticity. Very like the "Go Ask Alice" of the third millenium: a novel purporting to be based on factual, lived experience--in actual fact, a cynical fraud. All of the words here are very, very selfconsciously 'street', preciously explicit, and come off as a third-rate pastiche of a John Irving universe as dreamed by John Rechy. in work like this, it really does matter who's doing the writing. J.T. Leroy is a middle aged woman. That's it. At your own risk, readers.

Too bad Laura Albert couldn't cut it on her own as a writer. Too bad she had to conjure up an identity of someone much younger than herself to be taken seriously as a creative entity. And too bad that so many in the publishing world--agents, critics, artists, writers, etc.--jumped at the opportunity to champion the work of a reformed teenage junkie male prostitute . Doesn't matter if the writing is more suited for a grad-level creative writing class, just as long as it came from a reformed teenage junkie male prostitute instead of a 30-something wanna-be wife/punker from Brooklyn: because that makes all the difference, doesn't it? In any case, it might not matter at all to JT...uh, Laura...that she/he might be real or not; however, it CLEARLY mattered to JT/Laura that the writers and people she manipulated to gain so much attention were, in fact, very real: truth be known, she was banking on it. Whether this scam will pan out in the long haul for Laura is still up in the air, but from this point forward she'll have to prove herself as she is, which might be a lot harder than using the fabricated, cruel abuse of a child/wunderkind who never was. High-level performance art? Maybe. But it's true motives are as transparent as can be. The real victims here, however, are the young people who found a voice in "Leory" and believed someone they understood and trusted could put a voice to their lives and feelings when they couldn't. Let the heavy karma now unfold. Should be interesting.