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A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom
A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom is a ribald, brutal, and utterly unique look at race, sex, and growing up the hard way. A modern, jazzy take on the bildungsroman, it dissects the coming of age of Jessie Vincent Grandier, born in 1958 to a high-yellow, Upper-crust New Orleans Creole mother and a Louisiana bayou-bred, military father, Jessie battles to reconcile his existence with expectations and preconceptions of those around him, black and white. He shoulders the weight of his black bourgeois family’s ambitions through the ‘60s and ‘70s, his young mother’s death, his father’s descent into alcoholism, and the resulting familial melodrama that tears him and his family apart. If not broken, seemingly irreparably bent, he wends his way through Harvard in the 70s, desperate to translate his chaotic life into something akin to art. Post-graduation, he flounders on the edges of the film industry as he drinks his way through the Reagan 80s in gay bars from the West Hollywood to Silverlake. When his grandiose ambitions have abandoned him, when he’s almost beaten, and when it’s a breath away from too late, he looks back, regards the jagged shards of his life through delirium and regret, and, shockingly to him, pieces the remains into a delicious whole.
337 pages, Paperback
Published June 24, 2024
4 people are currently reading
3333 people want to read
About the author
Leonce Gaiter
8 books38 followersRaised in New Orleans, Washington D.C., Germany, Missouri, Maryland and elsewhere, Leonce Gaiter is the quintessential army brat. He began writing in grade school and continued the habit through his graduation from Harvard. He moved to Los Angeles to work in the creative and business ends of the film and music industries. His nonfiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, LA Weekly, NY Newsday, The Washington Post, Salon, and in national syndication. His latest novel, "In The Company of Educated Men", is published by Astor + Blue Editions. His thriller,"Bourbon Street" was published by Carroll & Graf in 2005. His historical novel, “I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang” is from Legba Books, September 2011. He currently lives in Northern California.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 13, 2024
If Ernest Hemingway was black, gay, and writing about growing up in the 1950s, he would have written something like Leonce Gaiter’s “A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom.”
“A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom” is presented as a bildungsroman and the description is apt. We follow the protagonist Jessie Vincent Grandier from birth as a military brat to his burgeoning adulthood as a Harvard graduate and a failed LA screenwriter. The book is a therapeutic journey of self-awareness as we learn with Jessie how you find your identity in a world that places you in boxes, how you can let your past speak without defining you, and why it all matters in the first place.
Jessie wasn’t supposed to be born. He says that his mother Lulene wasn’t supposed to have any more children after his two older sisters were born, however, she was determined to bear her husband a son. Jessie is named after his father Jessie Vincent Grandier, Sr. and from that moment on, Jessie acts out a terrible dance. As the only son in a family of women, he is marked to perpetually exist under the shadow of his abusive and negligent father. Part of his identity will always be connected to his father who he calls, “the Colonel.” He never meets the expectations his father set for a “boy to have.”
It’s not just his father. Lulene raised him to be tough because she knew she couldn’t always protect him. She dies when Jessie is only eleven and his last chance of self-expressive identity dies with her. Gaiter uses the image of Jessie’s lack of tears from here to the end of the book to show Jessie’s emotional constipation. He must discover who he is amid a minefield of expectations and assumptions.
Harvard makes assumptions about his identity based on the color of his skin. His college roommates make assumptions because of his educational ambitions. His friends make assumptions based on the persona he displays. Boyfriends make assumptions based on their needs. It is only when Jessie can confront all these expectations and the ghost of his mother that he can finally embrace who he is.
There is a Hemingway-Faulkneresque stream of consciousness that makes the book both engaging and a little off-putting. Although the whole book is written in the third person, that is easy to forget since the book is so personal that Jessie and his struggles are your own.
“A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom” is presented as a bildungsroman and the description is apt. We follow the protagonist Jessie Vincent Grandier from birth as a military brat to his burgeoning adulthood as a Harvard graduate and a failed LA screenwriter. The book is a therapeutic journey of self-awareness as we learn with Jessie how you find your identity in a world that places you in boxes, how you can let your past speak without defining you, and why it all matters in the first place.
Jessie wasn’t supposed to be born. He says that his mother Lulene wasn’t supposed to have any more children after his two older sisters were born, however, she was determined to bear her husband a son. Jessie is named after his father Jessie Vincent Grandier, Sr. and from that moment on, Jessie acts out a terrible dance. As the only son in a family of women, he is marked to perpetually exist under the shadow of his abusive and negligent father. Part of his identity will always be connected to his father who he calls, “the Colonel.” He never meets the expectations his father set for a “boy to have.”
It’s not just his father. Lulene raised him to be tough because she knew she couldn’t always protect him. She dies when Jessie is only eleven and his last chance of self-expressive identity dies with her. Gaiter uses the image of Jessie’s lack of tears from here to the end of the book to show Jessie’s emotional constipation. He must discover who he is amid a minefield of expectations and assumptions.
Harvard makes assumptions about his identity based on the color of his skin. His college roommates make assumptions because of his educational ambitions. His friends make assumptions based on the persona he displays. Boyfriends make assumptions based on their needs. It is only when Jessie can confront all these expectations and the ghost of his mother that he can finally embrace who he is.
There is a Hemingway-Faulkneresque stream of consciousness that makes the book both engaging and a little off-putting. Although the whole book is written in the third person, that is easy to forget since the book is so personal that Jessie and his struggles are your own.
January 16, 2025
A Memory of Fictions by Leonce Gaiter is one of those books that burrows deep into your soul, leaving you wrestling with the beauty and ache of it long after you’ve turned the final page. It’s a multi-layered masterpiece—both exquisite in its prose and unflinching in its truths.
The third-person narrator's voice stands out, feeling like an entity separate from the story, observing from the outside but not immune to its weight. At times, the narrator seems to judge the characters, particularly in the early chapters when introducing the family. The tone swings between empathy and distaste, as if the narrator can’t decide whether to love or loathe these people—and honestly, isn’t that how families often feel?
Speaking of family, I’ll say this: I desperately wanted a family tree in the front of this book! You know how fantasy books give you maps to navigate their worlds? That’s what I needed here. The dynamics and relationships are intricate, and a quick reference guide would’ve been a lifesaver.
What really struck me was how deeply this book delves into the way childhood shapes us. Trauma, identity, race, sexuality, gender—it’s all there, woven into the fabric of this story, especially within the African American experience. I could see this book being dissected in a college literature class, sparking rich discussions on these themes.
Early on, there’s this stunning line about the townspeople:
"They danced at the top of the hill these women and their men, unfettered by whites and their earthbound ways. Their shops, their streets, and their world.”
This imagery reminded me of so many other works of African American literature, where the idea of being “on top of the hill” represents both community and spirituality—closer to God, further from oppression. It brought Toni Morrison’s Sula to mind, where a similar motif appears. It’s a subtle but powerful nod to the resilience and sanctity of Black spaces.
And then there’s Lulene. That scene of her sitting in the chair, discovered by Jessie—it took me straight to Nikki Giovanni’s Mothers. That moment feels like an ode to Giovanni’s work, a universal connection to our own mothers, sitting alone, lost in thought, holding grief we’ll never fully understand. It was heartbreakingly intimate.
Of course, there were moments when Lulene and Grandier made me want to scream. As a parent, some of their choices felt incomprehensible, but also painfully human. The phrase “they did their best” is one I struggle with—it feels like both an excuse and a weight. How do you know better when you’ve never been shown better? This book doesn’t shy away from those hard truths, and it’s all the more devastating for it.
And here’s a detail that might just be me overanalyzing, but I couldn’t ignore it: the date on the very last page—October 17, 2024. It’s the same date as Lulene’s death. Maybe it’s coincidence, maybe it’s deliberate, but it felt like the book’s final bow—a full-circle moment steeped in meaning.
There’s so much to unpack in A Memory of Fictions. It’s a book that demands your time, your heart, and your willingness to confront hard truths. If you haven’t picked it up yet, I hope you will. You’ll be carrying this one with you long after you’ve finished.
Thank you Books Forward for the ARC!
The third-person narrator's voice stands out, feeling like an entity separate from the story, observing from the outside but not immune to its weight. At times, the narrator seems to judge the characters, particularly in the early chapters when introducing the family. The tone swings between empathy and distaste, as if the narrator can’t decide whether to love or loathe these people—and honestly, isn’t that how families often feel?
Speaking of family, I’ll say this: I desperately wanted a family tree in the front of this book! You know how fantasy books give you maps to navigate their worlds? That’s what I needed here. The dynamics and relationships are intricate, and a quick reference guide would’ve been a lifesaver.
What really struck me was how deeply this book delves into the way childhood shapes us. Trauma, identity, race, sexuality, gender—it’s all there, woven into the fabric of this story, especially within the African American experience. I could see this book being dissected in a college literature class, sparking rich discussions on these themes.
Early on, there’s this stunning line about the townspeople:
"They danced at the top of the hill these women and their men, unfettered by whites and their earthbound ways. Their shops, their streets, and their world.”
This imagery reminded me of so many other works of African American literature, where the idea of being “on top of the hill” represents both community and spirituality—closer to God, further from oppression. It brought Toni Morrison’s Sula to mind, where a similar motif appears. It’s a subtle but powerful nod to the resilience and sanctity of Black spaces.
And then there’s Lulene. That scene of her sitting in the chair, discovered by Jessie—it took me straight to Nikki Giovanni’s Mothers. That moment feels like an ode to Giovanni’s work, a universal connection to our own mothers, sitting alone, lost in thought, holding grief we’ll never fully understand. It was heartbreakingly intimate.
Of course, there were moments when Lulene and Grandier made me want to scream. As a parent, some of their choices felt incomprehensible, but also painfully human. The phrase “they did their best” is one I struggle with—it feels like both an excuse and a weight. How do you know better when you’ve never been shown better? This book doesn’t shy away from those hard truths, and it’s all the more devastating for it.
And here’s a detail that might just be me overanalyzing, but I couldn’t ignore it: the date on the very last page—October 17, 2024. It’s the same date as Lulene’s death. Maybe it’s coincidence, maybe it’s deliberate, but it felt like the book’s final bow—a full-circle moment steeped in meaning.
There’s so much to unpack in A Memory of Fictions. It’s a book that demands your time, your heart, and your willingness to confront hard truths. If you haven’t picked it up yet, I hope you will. You’ll be carrying this one with you long after you’ve finished.
Thank you Books Forward for the ARC!
February 7, 2025
Friends at @booksforwardpr kindly sent me a copy of Leonce Gaiter's book, A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom. This novel follows Jessie through his life, focusing on his formative years and how this time influenced his ambitions and adult choices. The amusing narration lets the reader explore Jessie's experience of struggling to define his identity in a world pressuring him to conform to society's view of men and the racial divide of the times, even in his community. The novel reads like a movie, oftentimes showing us eccentric characters that jump off the pages to the tune of Louisiana accents and Jazz music. As Jessie is an Army brat, scenes take place in different settings, showing how a military lifestyle affects a person's life, taking one through various experiences and environments, giving you a sense of pride but also great loss.
The novel has a non-linear plotline that takes us back and forth through Jessie's life. This narrative structure, just as distinct as the title, is not a mere stylistic choice. It is a reflection of the fragmented nature of memory and the complexity of human experience. The reader will encounter breaks and pauses within the plot, including news articles, personal documents, letters, and poetry. I have to admit I did not like them, but only because I was deeply invested in the narration and wanted to continue. However, these breaks offer the reader beautiful and emotive lyrical prose while also allowing us to see and understand our main character, Jessie (or) The Writer, at another level.
I truly enjoyed reading this book. I cried reading about Jessie's relationship with her mother and the impact of her words throughout his life. On the other hand, I laughed a lot; the narration is so good and pulls you out of the darker periods in Jessie's life with witty remarks sprinkled throughout the story. If you want to celebrate Black History Month, I recommend picking up this book. Leonce Gaiter has written nonfiction featured in The New York Times and has published other novels. I'm particularly interested in reading Gaiter's historical fiction novel I Dreamt I Was in Heaven, which is based on black cowboys and outlaws of the American West.
The novel has a non-linear plotline that takes us back and forth through Jessie's life. This narrative structure, just as distinct as the title, is not a mere stylistic choice. It is a reflection of the fragmented nature of memory and the complexity of human experience. The reader will encounter breaks and pauses within the plot, including news articles, personal documents, letters, and poetry. I have to admit I did not like them, but only because I was deeply invested in the narration and wanted to continue. However, these breaks offer the reader beautiful and emotive lyrical prose while also allowing us to see and understand our main character, Jessie (or) The Writer, at another level.
I truly enjoyed reading this book. I cried reading about Jessie's relationship with her mother and the impact of her words throughout his life. On the other hand, I laughed a lot; the narration is so good and pulls you out of the darker periods in Jessie's life with witty remarks sprinkled throughout the story. If you want to celebrate Black History Month, I recommend picking up this book. Leonce Gaiter has written nonfiction featured in The New York Times and has published other novels. I'm particularly interested in reading Gaiter's historical fiction novel I Dreamt I Was in Heaven, which is based on black cowboys and outlaws of the American West.
October 28, 2024
This was an absolutely phenomenal book! The story of Jessie and his experiences truly packs a punch that will stick with you forever. Gaiter is a wonderful storyteller and I can't wait to read more of his work.
November 1, 2024
A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom is a fantastic read! I loved Gaiter's writing, it was raw and lyrical. I'm really excited that this author has a backlist so I can sink into more of his work. If you're a fan of historical fiction and complex characters then this one is for you!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews