Synopses & Reviews
The national bestselling first novel by a virtuosic young talent.
Cherry Vanilla, twelve years old with a penchant for short leather skirts and make-up, has one dream: to become the most famous 'lot lizard', or truck stop whore, in the business. With his blond curls and his naked ambition he is determined to be more woman than most, and to match his idol, rival, and mother, Sarah. Adopting her name and sex, he heads off into the dangerous and fantastic worlds pocketed away in the West Virginian wilds. On his journey for fame he meets with sinister pimps, luck-restoring Jack-a-lopes, superstitious prostitutes who take him for a saint, and a host of bizarre and beautiful outcasts that make up his unusual, heartbreaking world.
Born in 1980, J.T. LeRoy was first published at the age of sixteen. LeRoy has written articles and stories for Spin, NY Press, Shout, The Stranger, and several anthologies, under the pseudonym Terminator, and is also the author of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, a collection of stories. The author lives in San Francisco.
Cherry Vanilla, twelve years old with a penchant for short leather skirts and make-up, has one dream: to become the most famous "lot lizard," or truck stop whore, in the business. With his blond curls and his naked ambition he is determined to be more woman than most, and to match his idol, rival, and mother, Sarah. Adopting her name and sex, he heads off into the dangerous and fantastic worlds pocketed away in the West Virginian wilds.
On his journey for fame he meets with sinister pimps, luck-restoring Jack-a-lopes, superstitious prostitutes who take him for a saint, and a host of bizarre and beautiful outcasts that make up his unusual, heartbreaking world.
"JT LeRoy's deft and imaginative first novel is astonishingly confident. His language is always fresh, his soul never corrupt [and] turns the tawdriness of hustling into a world of lyrical and grotesque beauty."Catherine Texier, The New York Times Book Review
"J.T. LeRoy's deft and imaginative first novel is astonishingly confident. His language is always fresh, his soul never corrupt [and] turns the tawdriness of hustling into a world of lyrical and grotesque beauty."Catherine Texier, The New York Times Book Review
"What was William S. Burroughs up to at the age of 20? Perhaps turning out the kind of prose that graces the pages of Sarah, [an] edgy but thoroughly engaging first novel . . . larger than life . . . comically Dickensian."San Francisco Chronicle
"Wildly imagined, but described with a quiet sureness . . . Sarah's considerable originality testifies to LeRoy's wonderful ability to make up beautiful things."Jonathan Taylor, The Village Voice Literary Supplement
"Never can I remember a debut this impressive, by someone this young . . . This is a writer to watch. His fire is leaping up out of the homeless shelter lot and onto the picket fences of our expectations. A marvelous, pungent, very vibrant conflagration."LA Style
"Sarah is weird, darkly funny and haunting. J.T. LeRoy has a gift, to be able to articulate his world so clearly and astringently, with grace and humor, but without glossing over the pain and brutality of it."Suzanne Vega
"J.T. LeRoy's Sarah is a revelation. It makes you realize how overused words like original and inspired have become. LeRoy's writing has a passion, economy, emotional depth, and lyric beauty so authentic that it seems to bypass every shopworn standard we've learned to expect of contemporary fiction. This is a novel gripped by an intense, gorgeous, yet strangely refined imagination, and its experience is unforgettable."Dennis Cooper
"This book glows with perverse imagination and linguistic prowess. It hypnotized me. I couldn't help entering its magical world or surrendering to its desperate, comic characters. These truckers, their prostitutes and their pimps are on hilariously ruthless survival trips, but even so, they are full of humanity. The protagonist is a brilliant, resourceful adolescent set adrift in a world of grifters, and he is unforgettably touching and poetic."Bruce Benderson, author of James Bidgood
"Like a cross between Nathanial West and Mark Twain, drunk out of their minds and collaborating on Charlie's Angel's meets The Headless HorsemanSarah is a wildly comic tour de force and a brilliant debut."Mary Gaitskill, author of Two Girls, Fat and Thin
"I am profoundly impressed by this amazing, absolutely brilliant new young writer, this JT LeRoy. His first novel is one of the most beautiful, shocking, disturbing pieces of fiction I've seen in years. You won't believe it until you've read it. It makes Bastard Out of Carolina seem like a day at the beach. But like that book, it too is crafted from careful, perfect language and buoyed up by a spirit so strong as to draw tears from my eyes."Lewis Nordan, author of Lightning Song
"Jeremy LeRoy writes like Flannery O'Conner tied to the bed and plied with angel dust. Sarah is an exhilarating, hysterical and beautifully written disturbing novel. Whatever young LeRoy had to live through to write a book like this, we're lucky he's here. An off-the-map brilliant, brutally funny debut."Jerry Stahl, author of Perv: A Love Story and Permanent Midnight
"Scary, sad, and way, way out there, LeRoy's picaresque debut novel follows a young boy through southern truckstops, where lot lizards turn tricks for drivers whose tastes run from women to transvestites to boys in jeans. Sarah is actually the name of our hero's mother, and in the beginning they both work for Glad, a fairly nice pimp who treats his whores decently and serves them up to a not-too-rough clientele. But when the boy appropriates his mother's name and gender (at least in appearance) to go wandering, he winds up in the clutches of a really bad guy named Le Loup. The gory details of how Sarah is abused by this monster and his cohorts will come as no surprise to those familiar with LeRoy's journalistic pieces (in Spin, Nerve, New York Press) under the pseudonym Terminator, some of which dealt with his own experiences. It is disturbing to encounter a 20-year-old who knows this much about life's seamy side, but LeRoy depicts his damaged, degraded characters with considerable tenderness."Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[LeRoy is] a hungry writer with the instincts of a person who fishes to eat. Once he hooks the reader he doesn't let go...quick, lively, and fascinating." Bookforum
Review
"What was William S. Burroughs up to at the age of 20? Perhaps turning out the kind of prose that graces the pages of Sarah, [an] edgy but thoroughly engaging first novel...larger than life...comically Dickensian." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Deft and imaginative...J. T. LeRoy is astonishingly confident. His language turns the tawdriness of hustling into a world of lyrical and grotesque beauty." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"This narrative unfolds in a West Virginia that is wildly imagined, but described with a quiet sureness, and is the source of Sarah's considerable originality....Taking in the baroque, polysexual details of this world, it's hard to separate those that testify to LeRoy's knowledge of trucking hustling, and Appalachian language, food, and wildlife from those that derive from his wonderful ability to just make up beautiful things." Village Voice
Synopsis
The national bestselling first novel by a virtuoso young talent.
Cherry Vanilla, twelve years old with a penchant for short leather skirts and make-up, has one dream: to become the most famous "lot lizard," or truck stop whore, in the business. With his blond curls and his naked ambition he is determined to be more woman than most, and to match his idol, rival, and mother, Sarah. Adopting her name and sex, he heads off into the dangerous and fantastic worlds pocketed away in the West Virginian wilds. On his journey for fame he meets with sinister pimps, luck-restoring Jack-a-lopes, superstitious prostitutes who take him for a saint, and a host of bizarre and beautiful outcasts that make up his unusual, heartbreaking world.
Synopsis
Sarah is the story of the prodigal son recast in the carnivalesque world of the highway truck stop and its environs. The narrator, an androgynous twelve year old boy, idolizes his mother Sarah, a "lot lizard", or truck-stop whore. He leaves the safety of the lot-a perversely idyllic kingdom ruled by Gladening Grateful Etc., a benevolent pimp who sent one of his boys to chef's school to cook gourmet meals at the truckstop diner-on a quest to become as famous as his mother. Adopting her name and sex, "Sarah" stumbles into dangerous and fantastic worlds pocketed away in the West Virginian wilds. He hitches a ride to the famous luck-restoring Jack-a-lope, is mistaken for a saint and must prove himself by walking on water. When he is captured by LeLoup, Glad's violent rival, "Sarah"'s life is all but over. Will he perish at the hands of LeLoup, or will "Sarah" find his way home?
J.T. LeRoy has created a hauntingly memorable world, strangely reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland. Heartwarming as it is bizarre, beautiful and stunningly original, Sarah heralds the debut of an inimitable new talent.
About the Author
J.T. LeRoy was born in 1980. First published at the age of sixteen, he has since published articles and stories in Spin, Nerve, NY Press, and several anthologies, under the pseudonym Terminator. He lives in San Francisco.