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o_morr's review
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
lauramardon's review
3.0
Returned to this book after reading for the first time around 15 years ago.
Second time around felt darker, more disturbing and sadder than I remembered. I couldn’t stop reading.
Second time around felt darker, more disturbing and sadder than I remembered. I couldn’t stop reading.
triciatea's review against another edition
4.0
This book was not what I expected. It's boldness and honesty were endearing rather than abrasive. Despite the obviously heart wrenching premise, Cherry Vanilla's brazen humor and shocking strength balanced out the tragic elements of this character's life and circumstance. Some books, you leisurely stroll through, but I felt like I sprinted through this book or rather, it catapulted me to the end. The lot lizard slang felt foreign but fascinating, and the eccentric characters reminded me of a circus but set instead in the rough, grotesque world of truck stop hustling. The ending felt a little anti-climactic compared to the rest of the book, but this uncertainty matches the character's dull realization that he's no longer Saint Sarah/Sam/Cherry Vanilla/She-Ra.
lucius_easen's review
dark
emotional
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
dreamofbookspines's review against another edition
2.0
I read this a lot in college and liked it, but I hated it as an adult.
mariclaireparrin's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
mikalanir's review
Punk rock! sexy, pensive, dark. I’m sad I couldn’t meet the author.
kyatic's review against another edition
3.0
This is one of those books which I really, really wish I'd read without any context. The first literary hoax I ever read was the Holocaust memoir, [b:Fragments|444804|Fragments|Binjamin Wilkomirski|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|433532], by Binjamin Wilkomirski. I read that as part of my English degree, and was told by the tutor that it was imperative not to research the book before I read it. So, I read it under the assumption that I was reading a real memoir, and only after I'd turned the last page did I discover the truth. It was odd; it meant that I'd initially read the book and appreciated it as one thing, only to be told afterwards that I had to appreciate it as something else, something more bizarre and of questionable morality, and it was hard to separate my first reading from my second; I couldn't help but read it as a memoir, even when I knew it wasn't, because that's how I'd encountered it.
I would imagine that there are many people who feel the same way about Sarah. For those not aware of the Sarah and JT Leroy mess, here's a quick synopsis: gay teen boy with HIV writes a semi-autobiographical novel about his childhood as a truckstop prostitute in the '90s, becomes a literary sensation, makes best friends with a host of celebrities including Winona Ryder and Lou Reed, then turns out to be the creation of a middle aged woman with a vivid imagination and her sister in law in a wig. Which is fine.
And here's the thing: people had been taken in, hook, line and sinker by this ruse. The far-fetched tales of a child prostitute (to use the popular, although inaccurate and whitewashed terminology) with a drug addicted absent mother had captured the attention of an entire market. They didn't read Sarah because they thought it was a great novel; they read Sarah because they thought it was a great autobiography. A great memoir by a young boy who had survived the unsurvivable and triumphed, become best friends with Courtney Love (possibly the greatest achievement of all), all against almost insurmountable odds. Living with HIV. Overcoming a drug addiction. Coming to terms with a transgender identity. These people did not read Sarah for the escapism of a wildly creative and unlikely narrative. They read it for the reality of it. They read it because they wanted to play their own part in the truth.
There's some debate over whether or not the whole thing was a marketing stunt or the attempt of a traumatised woman to fictionalise her own life, which then got out of hand. The real author, Laura Albert, has come out in her own defense in a documentary, in which she makes it clear that she had been abused herself and wrote Sarah with JT Leroy as an 'avatar', or a fictional character through which she felt able to convey fictionalised versions of her own real experiences. Some people point out that she could easily have done this without befriending Winona Ryder. I'm probably between the two camps, assuming that Laura Albert wrote the book as therapy and then exploited its success to meet her favourite filmstars and feel important. And no matter what the truth behind the ruse was, I think that's the crux of it. No matter why this hoax was written, it ultimately capitalised on people's desires - both Albert's and her readers' - to be a part of that narrative of overcoming terrible odds. It played on the '90s zeitgeist, in which stories about young queer people (yes, often with HIV) were starting to emerge from the fringes of literature and become money-makers for the first time. Celebrities like Madonna, Elton John and Bono had lent their names to the cause of HIV awareness. Stories about teenagers and drugs and mental illness were some of the most popular films and books of the day; Girl Interrupted, Junk, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. JT Leroy was a product not only of Albert's imagination, but of the era. There was no better decade to invent JT Leroy. People ate it up because it epitomised what was popular at the time, and what's more, it was real. Except it wasn't.
Back to Sarah itself, then. This is not a book I'd ever read based on its synopsis or subject matter alone, so I find it hard to approach it as anything other than a hoax. It's not a novel I would have picked up, even though the version I read was marketed as a novel rather than a memoir as it was reissued after the hoax became public, because I'm just not interested in this type of book ordinarily. It's not a book I would have read as a memoir, because I don't much care for 'I survived 400 near-death incidents' stories; they make me feel inadequate and sad. So, unlike my first foray into literary hoaxes, I would only ever have read this one because of its hoax status. Trying to look at it as anything else is difficult. As a work of literature, it's well-written and incredibly disturbing (especially when you consider that someone had to imagine it all) and it's undeniable that Albert is a very talented writer. I'm not sure that it's worthy of the cult status it enjoyed when it posed as a memoir, though. It tries very hard to take itself seriously, even when it's ridiculous, and honestly, it is frequently exactly that. I mean, the climactic event is a car chase over a magic bridge between two transvestite prostitutes, one dressed as a geisha, with a short-lived shoot-em-up between the geisha and an overweight man in pursuit whom we're told sweats so much that bats live in his truck and feed off his sweat. Seems likely.
All in all, it's a bizarre and blessedly short book which is undoubtedly well crafted, but really hard to appreciate as anything other than a hoax, because so much of its modern appeal rests on the fact that it is a hoax. The issues it covers aren't particularly relevant to a lot of modern readers today; it's still a good story, but not one that quite as many people are seeking to read. It lives on now not as a great book, but as a great scam. It makes me wonder about the life it would have in an alternate 2017, in which the hoax was never exposed, or another 2017 in which it was never a hoax at all, but always marketed as a novel. Riding the wave of the '90s - '00s zeitgeist as closely as it does, complete with drug addicted teenagers and sexuality issues, I'm not sure it would have had such a lengthy shelf life in those scenarios. I honestly think that this one would have been a hit either way in the '90s, but I don't think we'd still be reading it now. That said, the weirdest thing to me about Sarah is that I really don't think it needed to pose as memoir to do well at the time. I think that Albert would have ended up meeting Winona Ryder and Lou Reed and Courtney Love even if she'd been upfront about who she was from the very beginning. Sure, they might not have started wearing raccoon penis bones in honour of someone they knew was fictional, but I can fully imagine that Sarah would have captured that niche just as well as a novel as it did as a memoir.
Really, I think that when the story of how a book came to be is more interesting than the story that the book tells, that book isn't standing on its own merits. Sarah isn't so much a book as a relic, or a fun fact you tell at parties about that weird story you heard last year about the woman who wrote a fake memoir, or a piece of evidence in an infamous case about the author who wasn't. It isn't a novel and it isn't a memoir. It's a curiosity, and I'm not sure that that's a compliment.
I would imagine that there are many people who feel the same way about Sarah. For those not aware of the Sarah and JT Leroy mess, here's a quick synopsis: gay teen boy with HIV writes a semi-autobiographical novel about his childhood as a truckstop prostitute in the '90s, becomes a literary sensation, makes best friends with a host of celebrities including Winona Ryder and Lou Reed, then turns out to be the creation of a middle aged woman with a vivid imagination and her sister in law in a wig. Which is fine.
And here's the thing: people had been taken in, hook, line and sinker by this ruse. The far-fetched tales of a child prostitute (to use the popular, although inaccurate and whitewashed terminology) with a drug addicted absent mother had captured the attention of an entire market. They didn't read Sarah because they thought it was a great novel; they read Sarah because they thought it was a great autobiography. A great memoir by a young boy who had survived the unsurvivable and triumphed, become best friends with Courtney Love (possibly the greatest achievement of all), all against almost insurmountable odds. Living with HIV. Overcoming a drug addiction. Coming to terms with a transgender identity. These people did not read Sarah for the escapism of a wildly creative and unlikely narrative. They read it for the reality of it. They read it because they wanted to play their own part in the truth.
There's some debate over whether or not the whole thing was a marketing stunt or the attempt of a traumatised woman to fictionalise her own life, which then got out of hand. The real author, Laura Albert, has come out in her own defense in a documentary, in which she makes it clear that she had been abused herself and wrote Sarah with JT Leroy as an 'avatar', or a fictional character through which she felt able to convey fictionalised versions of her own real experiences. Some people point out that she could easily have done this without befriending Winona Ryder. I'm probably between the two camps, assuming that Laura Albert wrote the book as therapy and then exploited its success to meet her favourite filmstars and feel important. And no matter what the truth behind the ruse was, I think that's the crux of it. No matter why this hoax was written, it ultimately capitalised on people's desires - both Albert's and her readers' - to be a part of that narrative of overcoming terrible odds. It played on the '90s zeitgeist, in which stories about young queer people (yes, often with HIV) were starting to emerge from the fringes of literature and become money-makers for the first time. Celebrities like Madonna, Elton John and Bono had lent their names to the cause of HIV awareness. Stories about teenagers and drugs and mental illness were some of the most popular films and books of the day; Girl Interrupted, Junk, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. JT Leroy was a product not only of Albert's imagination, but of the era. There was no better decade to invent JT Leroy. People ate it up because it epitomised what was popular at the time, and what's more, it was real. Except it wasn't.
Back to Sarah itself, then. This is not a book I'd ever read based on its synopsis or subject matter alone, so I find it hard to approach it as anything other than a hoax. It's not a novel I would have picked up, even though the version I read was marketed as a novel rather than a memoir as it was reissued after the hoax became public, because I'm just not interested in this type of book ordinarily. It's not a book I would have read as a memoir, because I don't much care for 'I survived 400 near-death incidents' stories; they make me feel inadequate and sad. So, unlike my first foray into literary hoaxes, I would only ever have read this one because of its hoax status. Trying to look at it as anything else is difficult. As a work of literature, it's well-written and incredibly disturbing (especially when you consider that someone had to imagine it all) and it's undeniable that Albert is a very talented writer. I'm not sure that it's worthy of the cult status it enjoyed when it posed as a memoir, though. It tries very hard to take itself seriously, even when it's ridiculous, and honestly, it is frequently exactly that. I mean, the climactic event is a car chase over a magic bridge between two transvestite prostitutes, one dressed as a geisha, with a short-lived shoot-em-up between the geisha and an overweight man in pursuit whom we're told sweats so much that bats live in his truck and feed off his sweat. Seems likely.
All in all, it's a bizarre and blessedly short book which is undoubtedly well crafted, but really hard to appreciate as anything other than a hoax, because so much of its modern appeal rests on the fact that it is a hoax. The issues it covers aren't particularly relevant to a lot of modern readers today; it's still a good story, but not one that quite as many people are seeking to read. It lives on now not as a great book, but as a great scam. It makes me wonder about the life it would have in an alternate 2017, in which the hoax was never exposed, or another 2017 in which it was never a hoax at all, but always marketed as a novel. Riding the wave of the '90s - '00s zeitgeist as closely as it does, complete with drug addicted teenagers and sexuality issues, I'm not sure it would have had such a lengthy shelf life in those scenarios. I honestly think that this one would have been a hit either way in the '90s, but I don't think we'd still be reading it now. That said, the weirdest thing to me about Sarah is that I really don't think it needed to pose as memoir to do well at the time. I think that Albert would have ended up meeting Winona Ryder and Lou Reed and Courtney Love even if she'd been upfront about who she was from the very beginning. Sure, they might not have started wearing raccoon penis bones in honour of someone they knew was fictional, but I can fully imagine that Sarah would have captured that niche just as well as a novel as it did as a memoir.
Really, I think that when the story of how a book came to be is more interesting than the story that the book tells, that book isn't standing on its own merits. Sarah isn't so much a book as a relic, or a fun fact you tell at parties about that weird story you heard last year about the woman who wrote a fake memoir, or a piece of evidence in an infamous case about the author who wasn't. It isn't a novel and it isn't a memoir. It's a curiosity, and I'm not sure that that's a compliment.
mlbobb12's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
wbethie's review
2.0
Some critics say that the drama surrounding jt leroy squandered an emerging literary voice but the hoax is a thousand times more complex and thought-provoking than this book could ever be oops:(
Can’t give it lowest rating because I’ve never felt so viscerally ill reading a novel as I did w this and thats a rare talent
Can’t give it lowest rating because I’ve never felt so viscerally ill reading a novel as I did w this and thats a rare talent