Ingannevole è il cuore più di ogni cosa

by J.T. LeRoy, Martina Testa (Translator)

Jeremy ha solo quattro anni quando scopre che i suoi veri genitori non sono quelli, amatissimi, che lo hanno cresciuto fino a quel momento: la sua vera mamma è Sarah, una ragazza ancora adolescente che ne ha ottenuto la tutela e che lo coinvolge in una vita nuova, diversa, terribile. Il mondo per Jeremy cambia, nulla è più come prima, nulla potrà più esserlo, ma in qualche modo egli accetta le nuove regole, i travestimenti, la vita randagia e senza amore, tutto pur di ottenere l'affetto di sua madre.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Contemporary, Queer, LGBT, Novels, Dark

236 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2001

About the author

Laura Victoria Albert is the author of writings that include works credited to the fictional teenage persona of JT LeRoy, a long-running literary hoax in which LeRoy was presented to the public and publishers as a gender-variant, sexually questioning, abused, former homeless drug addict and male prostitute. Albert described LeRoy as an “avatar” rather than a “hoax,” and claimed that she was able to write things as LeRoy that she could not have said as Laura Albert. Albert was raised in Brooklyn, and she and her former partner Geoffrey Knoop have a young son. She has also used the names Emily Frasier and Speedie, and published other works as Laura Victoria and Gluttenberg.

Albert did not publish her writing as “memoir” – she published her writing as “fiction.”

Albert attests that she could not have written from raw emotion without the right to be presented to the world via JT LeRoy, whom she calls her “phantom limb” – a style of performance art she had been undertaking to deal with experiences even as a little girl, according to a 2006 interview in The Paris Review.

In November 2010, Laura Albert appeared at The Moth to tell her story on video.

Laura Albert has also written for the acclaimed television series Deadwood. She collaborated with director and playwright Robert Wilson for the international exhibition of his VOOM video portraits, and with the catalog for his “Frontiers: Visions of the Frontier” at Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM). In 2012 she served on the juries of the first Brasilia International Film Festival and the Sapporo International Short Film Festival; she also attended Brazil’s international book fair, Bienal Brasil do Livro e da Leitura, where she and Alice Walker were the U.S. representatives. Brazil’s Geração Editorial has re-released the JT LeRoy books in a boxset under Laura Albert’s name, and she and JT are the subjects of the hit Brazilian rock musical JT, Um Conto de Fadas Punk (“JT, A Punk Fairy Tale”).

She has taught at Dave Eggers’ 826 Valencia and the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and has lectured with artist Jasmin Lim at Artists’ Television Access with SF Camerawork's Chuck Mobley, in conjunction with a window installation about her work. She has also written for dot429, the world’s largest LGBTA professional network, and been an invited speaker at their annual conferences in New York.

Reviews

[Imogen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Know what? Fuck that. This is better because JT Leroy was a hoax. When you look at the way that honest, caring, media-appropriately-framed stories of trans people look in this society, you throw up.

Uh. *I* throw up. Maybe you are super into it.

I can't think of a trans author (okay, one who's not Jan Morris) who's writing fiction that really pokes me in the eye. Or memoir, actually. (I haven't read T Cooper yet though, so maybe T Cooper.)

I'd much rather read JT Leroy than Jennifer Finney Boylan. I'd much rather watch Hedwig than, what, Transamerica? It's just that, often, when people write about trans stuff without the preciousness that comes with trying to get everything right. Like, Bohjalian's Trans-Sister Radio? Pssh. There was nothing really WRONG with that book except that it was boring and handled the drama of being trans in such a fuckin Lifetime movie way.

JT Leroy, man, both this one and Sarah, whatsername got a lot of things right. I think she got them right because she was writing about pretty universal things- loneliness, desperation, laissez-faire attitudes toward who you fuck- but putting them in a trans context. Or a meta-trans context. Or something. It's just that- the trans stuff, the poverty stuff, the sex work stuff- that never seemed to be what was sensationalistic in her work, or, at least, more sensationalistic than anything Chuck Palahniuk writes. The sensationalism was in the fantastic emotional landscapes and I can't argue with that.

I read 'em a long time ago though. I could be wrong.

[Jennifer nyc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Depraved, deeply disturbing short stories of child abuse. I wish I could erase some images from my mind. Good writing, though. “To be ready for the spotlight, first you gotta know how to command shadows.”

[Meike · Rating 1 out of 5]

Laura Albert a.k.a. J.T. LeRoy is a woman who, at the height of the AIDS crisis, pretended to die from the disease, invented a ton of extreme violence she proclaimed to have endured during childhood, and scammed writers like Dennis Cooper and Bruce Benderson by exploiting the trauma they've endured due to witnessing their queer friends dying for years: She contacted those writers, posing as a desperate, AIDS-stricken teenager, in order to prompt them to support her career. By doing so, she created a hoax that made her rich and famous. Also, her whole fake persona and her literary characters are stolen from Cooper's George Miles Cycle.

When you consider this to be some kind of funny stunt, you're officially a terrible person. And no, I haven't read the book, but seeing the reviews here treating the whole affair as a smart play and ignoring or even laughing about the people she hurt, I just wanted to put it out there that capitalizing on queer trauma and deadly disease is, in fact, bad. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Correspondents #2

Dear MJ/Paul,

Hey man, thanks for writing to me. (You can tell I’m an American since I start my letters with hey man which all Americans use in their formal correspondence to denote their Yankeeism ha ha ha pulling yer leg man). I love that you love me! Thank you for reading my little bookies! I wrote them on napkins and on the floor. But look, Paul. I think you’re a mixed-up kid. I think you need guidance. Don’t be writing that metafiction shit man. That stuff was old hat in the eighties. Imagine what it is now! It’s a decaying chapeau. It’s a mouldy bowler, man. Stop it. I don’t read modern stuff since I once read a Paul Auster novel and thought what the hell is this man, is the dude on artichokes and cough syrup or something what the fiddle? If you were here, I’d teach you all the things you need to know about the piddle-widdle and the prostate. So get on a plane! I live in Brooklyn, which being a Scot you will know is one street somewhere at the bottom of New York, near the scuzzy bit where the blacks live but sort of near the posh bit where the yuppie hipsters live. We all consume Ritz crackers and Chablis. In the meantime, I have attached a scan of my left nipple to amuse your cousins. My latest book—This Squeezy Bottle Looks Somewhat Phallic—is coming out next March, be sure to buy four copies.

Til then,

J T Leroy

Next
Previous

Original Review:

A tale of irredeemable sin/depravity among a comic-book underclass, written with shrieking hysteria and sharp attention-to-detail for grotesque specifics. JT Leroy (Laura Albert’s wonderfully perverse literary persona) writes grubby dialogue packed with spite and terror, her register somewhere between the music of Babes in Toyland and laconic Zeus Cormac McCarthy. The strongest chapter is “Coal”—a powerful snapshot of a woman drifting into apocalyptic madness as the sinfulness of the world swells up around her. Leroy’s novel is narrated entirely from a child's perspective, giving the disjointed narratives the panic, terror and general repugnant steam required. The book has moments of stylistic saminess, an oddly dour tone, and lacks a wider philosophical framework pinning the intensity of this world to something the reader can connect with. It also lacks the humour and shock-value of Sarah. Worth your time.

[Miriam · Rating 2 out of 5]

(long)

the following biases are worth accounting for before i get into the review proper (which covers my response to both "sarah" and "the heart is deceitful"):

1) i read "sarah" and "the heart is deceitful" well after the whole leroy unveiling (which i followed with intense interest, so i knew a lot of the details beforehand), and in the context of working on a paper that read leroy into a broader history of literary deceptions/hoaxes/imposters, so i definitely approached the books with a certain set of assumptions as a reader and as a critic. i'm also, as this review will make clear, infinitely more interested in the jt leroy/laura albert narrative than in the actual books.

2) back when leroy still ostensibly existed, i had no interest in reading the books for several reasons: a) a general sense of unease with the whole "graphic autobiographical accounts of child abuse" subgenre (which applies more to memoirs, but the extent to which the leroy books were, in spite of being fiction, held up as reflective of the author's life, positions the leroy books differently than, say, "bastard out of carolina," which made for a different reading experience, at least for me, and which is pretty key for my overall view of the books); b) i found the whole leroy persona and the frenzy of adoration considerably off-putting; c) i had heard from various friends and acquaintances that there was a lot of doubt about the origins of leroy and the books, which given both (a) and (b) made me even less inclined to read the books and play into the hero worship.

3) whatever the genesis of the leroy persona (and laura albert, the woman behind the books, has a habit of contradicting herself on this subject as well as on the question of her own biography), i do not believe albert's claims that the cult of personality that developed around leroy was not at all her doing. she may not have started out with the goal in mind of creating the phenomenon she did, but nor did she do anything to stop it and indeed embraced it passionately (the vanity fair article from 2003 is a case in point; a quick google search will point you to the full text on the leroy website. seriously, it's vanity fair. leroy's celebrity was clearly not displeasing to albert).

4) my opinion of laura albert's actions and subsequent self-defense is not particularly sympathetic. i think the ethics of appropriating the various identities she claimed for leroy (his AIDS status, his homelessness, his gender issues and the attendant oppressions and abuse, and on and on) are highly questionable at best; i have yet to encounter an argument, either by albert or anyone else, that has altered my fundamental feeling that what albert did was unethical on a basic level (even totally apart from her/leroy's interactions with various early supporters who have described behaviour on leroy's part that was, in retrospect, clearly manipulative, and now feel personally betrayed). it may be reaching to say that albert's actions deprived a person who actually is/was homeless/sixteen/trans/living with AIDS/etc or any combination thereof from publishing their own work, but i don't think it's a stretch to say albert's actions did operate under and serve to reinforce the idea that marginal/marginalized individuals and populations are incapable of speaking for themselves and must be spoken for. it's basically a theft of discursive or cultural space -- one more perspective advanced in the name of various groups of people but not actually originating from any of them.

all that said, the question still has to be answered: what's the big deal, really, about what albert did? by all accounts, leroy's earliest advocates, from writers to literary agents, were all enthralled with the work and, especially on the production side of things, were almost certainly salivating over the prospect of publishing a teenage wunderkind with a highly marketable biography. i by no means think that albert was or is some kind of devious mastermind deliberately perpetrating an evil fraud on scores of innocent readers, which would be way too simple and has the tidy effect of exculpating the people who were responsible for the publication and positioning of the books (i know several earlier editions of the books had blurbs on the cover emphasizing their autobiographical authenticity, which, again, probably comes back to the publishing machinery and not necessarily albert herself).

as a reader, i can't say either book really held my attention as a story, but that may be attributable to the list of biases above; as well, i found "the heart is deceitful" almost unreadable, to be quite frank. i have a pretty strong stomach as a reader -- i can get through traumatic stories of holocaust survivors, for instance, without feeling like i did reading "the heart is deceitful," which i compared while in the midst of it to being battered about the head with a brick. i know this particular question falls rather stickily in the gap between individual reader preference and a critical position on the aestheticization of violence, but i was and am extremely uncomfortable (again, from both points of view) with the almost exuberant stream of ever-increasing cruelties. there are a lot of interesting parallels to draw here with other books, but i'll limit myself to one: binjamin wilkomirski, a.k.a. bruno dosseker (born bruno grosjean and later adopted), published a memoir of his holocaust experiences as a child that was later revealed to be false (as in, he was born and raised as a non-jew in switzerland, and while his experiences as a foster child were evidently traumatic, he was decidedly not held captive in majdanek and birkenau as claimed). his book ("fragments" in english) shares a similar aesthetic conceit: an uncomprehending child is shuttled from place to place, subject to continually escalating scenes of brutality that are presented to the reader from the perspective of a child.

here's where we get to the crux of my personal issues with laura albert and her creation. the historian hired by wilkomirski's publishers to investigate his story, stefan maechler, argues that by presenting this sort of extreme violence not only as perpetrated against a child but in the child's own voice serves to divide the world of the book and its audience into victims and villains. the payoff for the reader, then, is the identification with the victimized child, which allows us to feel sympathy for the child and righteousness at the depth of our caring for the victim. by contrast, those who question either the story itself or its narrative tactics become villains, which further shores up the sympathetic reader's desire to defend the victimized-child-cum-author.

and what does a fake holocaust memoir have to do with what are, let's not forget, novels? basically, i think the leroy books make use of a similar process to the one maechler describes, in which those who believe(d) in leroy's story and in the autobiographical authenticity of the stories are rewarded for their belief by the way it allies them with leroy, the ultimate victim whose pain was transformed through art (dennis cooper's blog entry after the unveiling makes a related point in discussing why so many authors were induced to help leroy -- here, he says, was someone who validated them as artists not only by professing to be inspired by their work but by being literally kept alive by it; what better validation, cf. cooper, for writers struggling with feelings of irrelevance in a chaotic world?).

again, i absolutely don't want to overlook the importance of the fiction/memoir distinction generally speaking (and in fairness to laura albert, she claims that it was her-as-leroy who insisted that "sarah" be published as fiction, and i haven't read anything to contradict that, though i haven't found any statements to support her, either). at the same time, claiming over and over that your fictions are autobiographical (which albert continues to argue in a more limited sense), and then going so far as to pretend to be the character you have created so as to further emphasize the truthfulness of your novels invites a different sort of reading than a novel or novelist that does not make those claims.

in the end, then, my beef with albert isn't really that she blurred the boundaries between fiction and memoir but that the entirety of her leroy performance project in effect, and i think in intention too, limited the way the books could be read and the terms on which they could be criticized and responded to. it's easy to say you want your books read "on their own merits," but these books have never been allowed to stand on their own feet as works of literature and not as extensions of a whole mess of other factors, all of which were brought into play by laura albert's actions (even if things may well have spiralled out of her control). i'm not a fan of books and authors that tell you how to read them and i object to what, in retrospect, looks like blatant emotional manipulation attempting to curtail the critical impulse.

taking all the above into consideration, i find it very difficult to advance an opinion on the books as works of art, not out of concern for deviating from some kind of impossible objectivity but because the issues involved are so complex and cut pretty deep. however, since i think that the two or three people who actually read to the end deserve something concrete, i'll give you my provisional position: as literature, the leroy books are pretty deeply flawed independently of everything else, and looking at them as products of a teenager versus the products of a fully grown adult with another fifteen years under her belt in which to develop her craft is a lot like looking at yourself in a mirror lit by flattering lighting and then switching to the buzzing clinical fluorescents of a hospital emergency room.

[Kyle · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

Honestly, I hard skimmed the last 60 pages (disregarding the seven additional stories not included in the original publication text).

It's not solely due to the fact that the subject matter is truly vile, and at the same time leaving me numb (I've been so desensitized by the worst-of-the-worst films and literature to be affected any more-so); this book is just not written well. The abuse is exploitative and repetitive in its savagery. It's an unrelenting Hell for Jeremiah, but one that feels forced for the sake of being ruthlessly edgy on the author's part.

This book is, as others have expressed, "poverty porn". Sarah is the white trash villainess to little Jeremiah's victim. Again and again, we are hammered over the head with: Sarah being a horrible mother and Jeremiah paying for it in the most violent of ways. But that's it. I never saw any much of an in between for their roles. It was always Sarah being a terrible person, and Jeremiah suffering because of it. It felt too much, again, like a contrived effort at keeping the story more despicable than the next-- and I can almost imagine this book becoming a talking point for many Brooklynite Hipsters: "I just read the craziest book. It's pretty hard to get through- you should try!"

The reason I picked this up was because I heard about the author's story, which was more interesting than this attempt at tackling a difficult subject matter. I wish I had read something else. Abandonment, child abuse, loss of identity... issues that should be treated with better care, and not made to feel exploited and false in an effort to generate a shock factor.

In the end, I am disappointed.
This book...
It's not edgy, it's phony.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not the heart that is deceitful above all things, but this author. But she fooled a whole lot of stupid hipsters and assorted douche bag celebrities so that makes her ok by me.

[Jack Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, tightly structured transgressive picaresque/ road novel that was wrongfully co-opted into a self-helpy child abuse expose/memoir. It's affecting and sad but, let's face it, this has more in common with those Richard Kern-Lydia Lunch shorts of the 80's, "The Right Side of My Brain" and particularly "Fingered," than it does "A Child Called It"--a trashy nihilistic punk quality that Asia Argento capitalized on in her brilliant, woefully underrated movie adaptation of it. Sarah is one of the great villains(antiheroes?) of 00's literature. This was unanimously, deservedly acclaimed before the authorship scandal broke and then the consensus was immediately changed to "ZERO STARS! IT'S FAKE AND I FEEL CHEATED!" It's self-evident that this is fiction--GOOD fiction! Final chapter is a nice nasty little cherry on top.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

"The Heart is deceitful Above All Things takes a journey into the dark heart of the American road trip. A series of connected autobiographical stories, it describes the disturbing relationships between a mother and her adolescent son as she moves from lover to lover, dressing him as a girl and forcing him to shoplift. These are shocking stories of abusive love love and dysfunctional sexuality, of heartbreak and innocence lost. Once again, LeRoy's fantastical imagination and lyricism twist his haunted past into something utterly strange and magical." From the back cover of the 2001 paperback edition from Bloomsbury.

When I read this novel twenty years ago I thought it was one of the most beautiful and moving collections of stories I had read for some time. Did I think it was true? or a memoir? That is difficult to answer. I didn't think it was an autobiographical memoir but yes in the sense that the author had drawn on real 'lived' experiences to create these stories. The writing is described as 'A series of connected autobiographical stories...' which I, and most everyone else reading these stories when they came out, took to mean what it says. For example when Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist he said, and everyone accepted, that the story was based on what he saw and heard in the slums of London. He never claimed and no one thought he was Oliver Twist, or that he was telling the tale or experiences of a particular boy. When Oscar Wilde said, about another Dickens child character from 'The Old Curiosity Shop':

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”

People could regard the remark as cynical or in poor taste but they didn't think he was making fun of a real child's death. But when J.T. Leroy describes 'Jeremiah's' experiences we understood that he was describing real experiences and pain transformed into art. J.T. LeRoy is not Dennis Cooper describing boys being abused as a metaphor but someone describing real experiences. It was impossible to say that you 'laughed' at 'Jeremiah's' experiences because it was understood that he and they were real. What J. T. LeRoy did was no different to what Helen Dale aka Helen Demidenko (please see my footnote *1 below for details on her deception) did.

The problem with J.T. LeRoy's work is the same as with Helen Dale's, it has been sold to the reader with lies. Helen Dale's novel has been republished under her name but to universal indifference. Even if she had claimed to be 'channeling' Demidenko as Avatar I don't think she could resurrect her career as an author. So how do we deal with J. T. LeRoy and the novels he wrote (please see footnote *2 below for why I am using 'he')? Can we read this, and his other novels, now as fictional creations?

On the evidence of Helen Dale or 'The Painted Bird' by Jerzy Kosiński (see my footnote *3 below on Kosinski) the answer is no, once falsehood has been introduced a work is tainted. Helen Dale, Jerzy Kosinski and J.T. LeRoy chose to misrepresent their work, no publisher pushed them to tell lies. The most revelatory aspect of both LeRoy and Helen Dale is that neither of them wrote anything once the deception was revealed. This is particularly significant in the case of LeRoy because he has been very busy reinventing himself and his story but now, instead of telling stories about growing up as a boy experiencing abuse he now tells stories of growing to be a woman who 'channels' the experiences of poor white boys being abused and creates an Avatar to give them a voice. Of course it is all bollocks. If LeRoy had had a real 'voice' and real stories to tell she would have gone on writing.

I have written more against LeRoy's other works about why I reject her whole oeuvre as tainted if not worthless and won't repeat it again. For a long time, even after the deception was revealed, I retained a loyalty to 'The Heart is Deceitful' as literature but not anymore, which is why I removed my original post.

*1 Helen Dale (born Helen Darville; 1972) is an Australian writer and lawyer who in 1994 published a novel 'The Hand that Signed the Paper' about a Ukrainian family who collaborated with the Nazis in The Holocaust, under the pseudonym Helen Demidenko, and won a major Australian literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award. Helen Dale was interviewed, as Helen Demidenko, dressed in Ukrainian 'folk' dress and told how the novel was based on stories told by grandparents and great aunts and uncles. It was all lies.
*2 I am using 'he' to describe J. T. LeRoy because that is how the author was described when the books were published.
*3 Jerzy Kosinski was once a much admired author up until the 1980s when the honesty of books like The Painted Bird was demolished.

[Kat · Rating 1 out of 5]

mostly sensationalist blather. years ago, some of my upper middle class pals (who couldn't even stomach dorothy allison) all held this book in such high esteem as some tome of truth. i wasn't surprised as i read it that the grim/allegedly "raw" story-telling felt manufactured- as manufactured and fun as watching the depictions of poor or "trashy" people fighting it out on the stages of maury povich or jerry springer. more often than not leroy/altert employs caricatures to characters. sickened but not surprised, mediocre folks are always co-opting other cultures in order to edge themselves up, make their middle of the road hip suddenly. middle and upper class people co-opt style and iconography from working class/poor folks all the time in order to "up" their "realness".

these books though "interesting" in terms of the backstory regarding laura albert. i can appreciate when a writer can mine their pain or history for stories - be it non fiction or fiction. however, despite the fact that i'm sure jt leroy was a conduit to release her pain, i cannot let the fact go that she chose the most sensationalistic way (borrowing and combining real issues) to share because, she knew, that was the way to achieve fame - not from no name hustlers or kids on the street - rather from celebrities wanting to be anything other than what they are.

i think that may be what always 'gets' me with this book, as someone who grew up working class/poor and as a survivor- that these stories ring hollow for me

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the works of J.T. Leroy turned out to be hoax. They weren’t autobiographical or the work of a runaway teenage prostitute. It still doesn’t diminish the powerful writing and stories. I am glad it was a hoax knowing things like the actions on these pages and people like this do exist is horrifying but I’m glad in this instance they all didn’t happen to this one person and that there is no real victim here reaching out and telling there story.

This book is sort of a prequel to SARAH it was written and came out after SARAH but tells the early stories of how the protagonist of SARAH got to where they were at the beginning of that book. This book is hard to get through. It has the beauty of language, but the stories are so horrific and the characters vile that sometimes you want to put the book down take a shower and call a friend to assure that there is good in the world and good people.

It’s an amazing book that is not uplifting at all you’ll be amazed the character survived at all and quite frankly afterwards it will leave you probably feeling quite down. It is a amazing book though, at times I have no right to complain about trivial things because it cold be a lot worse it also leaves me with a disposition where reading about the evils of the world makes me feel like a cop where I look for danger and worst case scenerios wherever I look and feel no matter how horrible. Nothing in human behavior can shock me to the core, it can disgust me but never shock unless i witnessed ir first hand which is very unlikely

It’s almost like when I read a book that I know is horror or a downer challenging myself to react or seeing how far I can read until I finally feel something .

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed it.

I first read this book in eighth grade (age 14 or so), and took it in simply as a work of fiction (as that is how the copy I had rented from the library was marked). I didn't know, nor did/do I care, that JT Leroy was not a real person. I still loved the book in all its scandal and insensitivity. I enjoyed reading about a sad and difficult childhood while I myself was going through difficult times. I found it very enjoyable in general, although I am one who tends to lean towards more controversial reads at times. One of my favorite things about reading is witnessing so many different styles of writing. This particular style I found to be very engaging and entertaining.

I've since read it again, and I don't regret purchasing my own copy. I've lent it out so many times, and have had people ask for it again because they also liked it.

The book really just follows the life of Jeremiah. Although his life is anything but ordinary. He is a young, and very abused, boy; born of the very young Sarah, a prostitute who drags him around wherever she goes. He begins to look up to her, and adopt her habits and lifestyle. The book covers many undesirable topics (like rape and pedophilia) as well as some more controversial subjects (like homosexuality and prostitution). It's not a very long read, and if you don't have a weak stomach or an overly sensitive heart, I'd say give a whirl.

[Caroline Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title comes from a bible passage, actually. It’s from the book of Jeremiah (also the name of the book’s protagonist) and goes: “The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt: Who can know it?” I don’t even need to say how effective this is in the book. The book reads in a bit of a choppy sequence, though the small print on the cover which says “stories” is a little bit misleading. All the chapters add up to one big story about a kid, Jeremiah, whose mother broke from her extremely religious household after the birth of Jeremiah when she was fourteen. The story circles around Jeremiah and his travels with his mother, Sarah, who descended from her father’s good grace before becoming pregnant and is now a drug using truck stop prostitute. I watched the movie before I read the book, which I kind of regret. I usually don’t do that, but the movie was quite good and very close to the book. The book, though, captured the rawness and the confusion of the protagonist much better than the movie did. It’s a fairly easy and quick read and full of grime and just raw truth where living on the edge of things is concerned. The fact that it’s told through the eyes of a little kid is even more bizarre but ultimately delivers a better story, in my opinion. Give it a read :)

[SadieReadsAgain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't really care about the whole drama surrounding JT Leroy when I read this, about whether he really existed or was a made up character (which it now turns out "he" was) in turn writing works of fiction based on a life which is also a work of fiction... I still don't care that JT didn't actually exist - it doesn't take away from the writing or the story in my eyes. Perhaps it displays even more storytelling talent on the author's part?

I found "The Heart..." to be more realistic than "Sarah" was, there was no away-with-the-fairies stuff, apart from incidents which you are made aware are the delusions of the characters rather than something the reader has to suspend belief in. I liked the way it kind of jumped about in places, and you had to keep reading for it all to make sense. I do enjoy stories like that, which reward you for reading on and putting some thought into the words as you take them in. And again, as in "Sarah", its written perfectly from the point-of-view of the child narrator, with wonderful child-like interpretations of the adult world, especially the crystal meth part. Its a dark and dirty book too, one that makes you feel unease and real emotion as you read it. LeRoy has a voice that weaves intriguing stories, but stories which still leave room for your own diagnosis.

[tiffany · Rating 1 out of 5]

picked this up at a used bookstore and regret it so much - i didn't know any of the backstory/controversy behind j.t. leroy as a literary persona, but i struggled so much to read this.

major, major, major tw for child abuse, neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse...the list goes on. it read like trauma porn, amplified by the fact that the author didn't experience these situations at all but instead crafted the entire identity of j.t. leroy and called this an autobiographical work. i suppose that the one good thing this book did was illuminate how scarily easy it is for children to slip between the cracks of social services and foster care.

but i ended up skimming so much of it because it was essentially a never-ending cycle of abuse and mistreatment, with no cohesive narrative thread or character voice. i guess maybe that might've the author's entire intent, but i hated reading this and will remember it as one of my least favorite reads.

[Tosh · Rating 1 out of 5]

The JT LeRoy narrative is a depressing subject. It's one thing to write under another identity, but to actually pull people in via the "victim's mentality" is quite Tom Ripley like. There is no doubt in my mind that the author is disturbed, but what is worst is how she hoodwinked a whole community of people.

And I am not excluding myself from this world. I too am drawn to writers who seem to have interesting lives. So who can say what is real or not real. What is interesting is that as a reader or a viewer (voyeur?) we want to believe in something so much that we are willing to look the other way - when the obvious is on hand.

And basically the title says it all: "The heart is deceitful..."

[Ethlinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Écriture incroyable, mais qui rend le livre encore plus dur à lire

[Mafalda Machado · Rating 5 out of 5]

i wasn’t sure how to rate this book because the topics are so disturbing and gut-wrenching that it almost felt wrong to rate it
however, the writing is so intelligent and well-executed, with the author managing to jump back and forth in time and place without confusing or losing the reader

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I originally saw the film that was based on this short story collection. I know think about those who may have believed that this was a true memoir and not a work of fiction.
I will say that this was beautifully written. I well-crafted collection of tales about human tragedy, child abuse, drug addiction, mental illness, and prostitution. I wouldn't recommend this for everyone, as there were some triggering issues about sexual abuse of a child, and further physical and verbal abuse of children.

[Pax · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visceral. Like a fist. Or a wound. It's so hard to describe the writing, but it's an experience unlike many other books I've read.
And that's why read, isn't it?

[Aurora · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ingannevole è il cuore più di ogni cosa" è un libro agghiacciante nella sua spietata crudezza. Un bambino di nome Jeremy viene portato via dal suoi genitori adottivi, per tornare con la madre biologica che è una drogata e prostituta, e lascia credere al bambino di non essere più desiderato dai genitori adottivi, perché è un bambino cattivo. Questo romanzo parla di tossicità materna, di violenza psicologica e fisica, alla quale da bambini diventa difficile sottrarsi, perché si finisce per credere in fondo di meritarsi tanta crudeltà esercitata dagli adulti, forse perché in fondo si è sbagliati e cattivi. È un romanzo che spezza il cuore.
Un vero pugno allo stomaco. Ci si chiede se alla fine, tutta questa malvagità riservata ad un bambino possa finalmente terminare, ma la risposta dell' autrice è dura da accettare, ed è NO.
Dico autrice, perché J.T Leroy è uno pseudonimo, usato da una donna per sentirsi più a suo agio per trattare tematiche così forti e delicate in modo così disinvolto. In conclusione , è un romanzo molto breve, ma un po' difficile da digerire per le tematiche di violenza racchiuse in esso, che non consiglierei a tutti i lettori, dato che potrebbe trasmettere dei trigger negativi.
Nel complesso mi è piaciuto, anche se l' ho trovato un po' ripetitivo, nel senso uno di quei romanzi che a lungo andare scorrendo le pagine diventa la solita solfa, Jeremy che le prende sempre da qualcuno o per un motivo o per un altro, insomma si entra in un loop di violenza senza fine da diventare nauseabondo e voyeuristico, un po' troppo eccessivo.

[Renee Ruin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book had an extremely emotional and evocative effect on me. From the moment I opened the cover I couldn't put it down. I felt all these emotions that I had never understood about my own abusive and estranged relationship with my mother. Every inch of love, hate, pain, confusion, ambivalence I felt. I could identify with both Jeremiah and Sarah. It was the first time since reading the autobiography of Frances Farmer when I was 13 that I had some frame of reference for experiences I have felt myself. Needless to say the book left a lasting impression. I then read Sarah and was even more engulfed by the stories and the fluidity and raw vivid nature in which JT wrote.

I wasn't angry nor bitter once this 'truth' ( Laura Albert was JT Leroy) was exposed. I could completely relate to the idea of needing an avatar or an alter to be able to express the stories of truth. I have kept notebooks and notebooks like abysses of all the writing I have done and I have always felt a need to write in 3rd person, to be able to get outside myself in order to tell the story. Especially, looking at my childhood where disassociating and taking on a 3rd person view became my defense mechanism, my safety place.. So the idea that Laura felt the need to be anonymous or create a pseudonym or fake persona in order to be true to her story didn't make her stories any less true in fact if anything it highlighted the idea that so many people are willing to accept truths when they believe its a certain person, somebody else. No one wants to believe those truths can be their own so we dissociate and make them someone else's truth. I think those who understand what is true and what is raw and what are the entrails and bare exposed bones of Leroy/Albert's writing understand the dignity in her position.

All I know is that I felt more truth and more raw beauty and pain from JT's books than I felt from any so-called true biography. Then came the moment sometime in early 2011 when I decided to write Laura. We immediately began a long dialogue and befriended each other. She is now someone I hold in very high esteem and admiration as a human, as a heart, as a soul. She has continued to inspire me and encourage me in my own life and I now count her as a dear friend.

This book is a raw unadulterated look at pain, guilt, shame, the synchrony of love and hate and the inner demons and saints. This book remains one of the most honest pieces of writing in my mind. It pierced me on a level that I personally won't forget and Asia Argento's adaptation to film was the perfect visual to accompany the book.

Laura's personal pain and empathy of the pain of others is unwavering and the way in which she can show the truth in a way that shows the edges and the raw bones of what relationships and existence throughout moments and memories are.

[Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

"what makes us into who we are".
I think this is the underlying subtext to this book.
I find the two parallel lies interesting:
1. the lies that Sarah told Jeremiah to keep him in check
2. the lies told to Sarah by her father - the concept of right or wrong, and sins and punishment.

Whilst Sarah is about rebellion and frustration, Jeremiah is about obedience and innocence.

The actual incidents, whilst disturbing, I find it (unfortunately) believable, as I have read instances of abuse and violence carried out on children by their guardians (usually biological parents) For a variety of reasons.

I didn't "enjoy" this book, but I think it throws up quite a few points of discussion. I am glad to have read this.

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I re-read this book would I still like it? Of course I would, and I would laugh at [no need to mention a name] who ended up pregnant from an encounter with a fictitious author.

The hoax aspects of the J.T. LeRoy shenanigans should not overshadow the pain, the beauty, and the original voice of these truck-stop hooker, lot lizard stories.

Why the charade? A hoax that developed its own inertia. A writer who never existed yet who published bestselling books. An unbelievable story made into a movie.

But knowing what we all know now, does anyone still read J.T. LeRoy?

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A crazy, sad, and twisted story of abuse and mayhem and its affect on a young man.

I read this years ago before the scandal about the author- it's a crazy story! I initially read about this author in the News and Observer and read two of the books, this being one of them. Then, I was on an airplane and happened to read a story in Rolling Stone about how they busted this lady....

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/20... for more info about the case....

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't really care who wrote this book, I just care that it's good.

[Elina Tola (Bookeliina) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atceros, kad pusaudze būdama lasīju šo grāmatu un šķita, ka nekā labāka nevar būt.

[Jonna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but also a somewhat artificial inventory of all kinds of bad things that can happen to a child. Interesting how finding out about the writer's background influences one's reading.

[Poornima Vijayan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't go on. The trauma seemed to be endless- homelessness, physical abuse, sexual abuse, mental abuse, sexual identity crisis.. I think I love myself a little. I didn't want to put me through this drafted version. I'm not saying things like this don't exist in real, but it felt like a laundry list of all things that could go wrong punched into one book.

[Roberta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crudele.

"Su quella cornice di roccia, guardando dall'alto le case sgangherate e distrutte, capisco che il mondo è improvvisamente diventato spaventoso, violento e falso come i cartoni animati che non avevo il permesso di guardare." [pag. 18]

Comincio con il dire che non sapevo nulla dell'operazione di marketing con cui è stato lanciato questo romanzo (che in teoria doveva essere un'autobiografia e poi si è rivelato scritto da una donna di circa 40 anni madre di famiglia) per cui non mi sento ingannata. Del resto preferisco pensare che quando letto in queste pagine non sia vero, per ovvi motivi.

E' vero che il romanzo è morboso, è vero che è cattivo, è vero che è eccessivo, è vero che è una scossa elettica per il lettore. Allo stesso tempo però l'autore/autrice riesce ad infondere una certa dolcezza in alcuni punti, macabra ed ossessiva ma pur sempre dolcezza. Ed alcune scene sono pure esilaranti (quando Jeremiah recita orgoglioso il "salmo" dei Sex Pistols al nonno ultra cattolico, o quando Sarah insiste nel voler far colpire Jeremiah da un meteorite per accalappiare il ranger, o quando Jeremiah se la prende con il carboncino bambino). Forse è un'ilarità nervosa, e sicuramente non è catartica, ma l'autrice è riuscita a creare un mondo che ci colpisce.

Forse è vero che è facile colpire le persone puntando sul sensazionalismo, però di un'autobiografia vera scritta così non avremmo detto nulla e per me Jeremiah è un bambino vero di carta e al libro stan bene tutte le stelle che posso dare perchè forse da qualche parte c'è ancora una scheda di quelle che usavano i suoi genitori adottivi e forse queste stelle lo aiuteranno a creare un filo di speranza.

P.S.: come poi una madre di famiglia riesca ad inventarsi una tale storia è un altro discorso.