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A review by bevin1279
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by J.T. LeRoy
2.0
I felt deceived by this book. Not so much by the LeRoy/Albert scandal - which I discovered existed as I neared the finish of this book - but rather by the sheer fact that I'd been led to believe that this was a book of stories. I.e., short stories. Is this not what the publisher meant when the word 'stories' was tacked artfully onto the visually striking cover art?
But alas! This is not a book of short stories! It is a novel that has lost its time delineation. It is a novel uncomplicated by setting beyond redneck America (with a few notable exceptions, I'll give you that). It is a novel, full stop.
However, being marketed as short stories (in contrast with the novel by the same author that is mentioned on the back cover), I read them as such. And came to one conclusion whilst halfway through: this author has only one story to tell. In a fit of anger - a book of short stories but it's only one story??!! - I saw that the novel published by LeRoy was called Sarah, a prominent character in several of the so-called short stories. Then I read the note about the author, who 'still enjoys playing wiffle ball' & thought, this guy has one story & it's his own? & he's some wunderkind who thanks Courtney Love & Suzanne Vega & all manner of trendy people in his acknowledgments and he only has one story to tell?
So then I put the book down for a while & ranted about douchebag pretentious arses who ride coat tails to get published. After rant phase, read about the 'scandal' & then finished the book just so I could be done with it.
So, the writing is at times beautiful & the general plot (because I gave up on the short story concept & just began thinking of this as a novel) is heartbreaking. And the thing of it is that it's heartbreaking even without it being possibly true. As a fictional novel, this is a heartbreaking ordeal.
(Yes, I do realize I harp on the genre a lot in this review. It's an important concept, not left to cover designers. The editors should've left it as a novel, an artsy-hipster-pretentious novel. Because let's face it, that's exactly what it is.)
But alas! This is not a book of short stories! It is a novel that has lost its time delineation. It is a novel uncomplicated by setting beyond redneck America (with a few notable exceptions, I'll give you that). It is a novel, full stop.
However, being marketed as short stories (in contrast with the novel by the same author that is mentioned on the back cover), I read them as such. And came to one conclusion whilst halfway through: this author has only one story to tell. In a fit of anger - a book of short stories but it's only one story??!! - I saw that the novel published by LeRoy was called Sarah, a prominent character in several of the so-called short stories. Then I read the note about the author, who 'still enjoys playing wiffle ball' & thought, this guy has one story & it's his own? & he's some wunderkind who thanks Courtney Love & Suzanne Vega & all manner of trendy people in his acknowledgments and he only has one story to tell?
So then I put the book down for a while & ranted about douchebag pretentious arses who ride coat tails to get published. After rant phase, read about the 'scandal' & then finished the book just so I could be done with it.
So, the writing is at times beautiful & the general plot (because I gave up on the short story concept & just began thinking of this as a novel) is heartbreaking. And the thing of it is that it's heartbreaking even without it being possibly true. As a fictional novel, this is a heartbreaking ordeal.
(Yes, I do realize I harp on the genre a lot in this review. It's an important concept, not left to cover designers. The editors should've left it as a novel, an artsy-hipster-pretentious novel. Because let's face it, that's exactly what it is.)