Sarah: A Novel - Hardcover

Leroy, J. T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582340765 ISBN 13: 9781582340760

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2000

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 this title

From the Publisher:

"Sarah is weird, darkly funny and haunting. JT 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, author of All Ears
"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 Horseman--Sarah 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 J.T. LeRoy. His first novel is one of the most beautiful, shocking, disturbing pieces of fiction I've seen 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

From the Back Cover:

Sarah never admits that she’s his mother, but the beautiful boy has watched her survive as a “lot lizard”: a prostitute working the West Virginia truck stops. Desperate to win her love, he decides to surpass her as the best and most famous lot lizard ever. With his own leather mini-skirt and a makeup bag that closes with Velcro, the young “Cherry Vanilla” embarks on a journey through the Appalachian wilds, dining on transcendental cuisine, supplicating to the mystical Jackalope, encountering the most terrifying of pimps, walking on water, being venerated as an innocent girl saint—and then being denounced as the devil. By turns exhilarating and shocking, magical and realistic, Sarah brings urgency, wit, and imagination to an unknown and unforgettable world.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1582340765
• ISBN 13: 9781582340760
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 166