Robert Leleux

[reviews_and_ramblings]

"For those of you who don't know, I'm a freelance writer and editor, and the author of two books. My latest, The Living End, a memoir about my beloved grandmother's journey through Alzheimer's, has been published by St. Martin's Press. Though it's a difficult and painful topic, I'm excited to share my family's story. For us, forgiving and forgetting were more than usually intertwined.

My first book, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, also published by St. Martin's Press, was a very different story. It gave me the chance to tour the country, meeting fabulous people from every corner of the US.

Now, when I'm not writing books, I'm also the features editor of Lonny Magazine, one of the greatest shelter magazines in the industry. And I also write the Tex in the City column for the Texas Observer, one of the best independent news sources in the Southwest. It's an honor to write for them, and it, too has offered me the chance to meet amazing people.

So, let's see, what else can I tell you about myself? I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with my gorgeous husband Michael. I consider myself lucky to have such a happy life!

Further Readings:

The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy by Robert Leleux
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; First Edition edition (January 6, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312361696
ISBN-13: 978-0312361693
Amazon: The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy
Amazon Kindle: The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy

The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy is The Houston Press's Best Houston Book of the Year for 2008.

In the Dear John letter Daddy left for Mother and me, on a Saturday afternoon in early June 1996, on the inlaid Florentine table in the front entry of our house, which we found that night upon returning from a day spent in the crème-colored light of Neiman’s, Daddy wrote that he was leaving us because Mother was crazy, and because she’d driven me crazy in a way that perfectly suited her own insanity.

In a memoir studded with delicious lines and unforgettable set pieces, Robert Leleux describes his East Texas boyhood and coming of age under the tutelage of his eccentric, bewigged, flamboyant, and knowing mother.

Left high and dry by Daddy and living on their in-laws’ horse ranch in a white-pillared house they can’t afford, Robert and Mother find themselves chronically low on cash. Soon they are forced into more modest quarters, and as a teenaged Robert watches with hilarity and horror, Mother begins a desperate regimen of makeovers, extreme plastic surgeries, and finally hairpiece epoxies---all calculated to secure a new, wealthy husband.

Mother’s strategy takes her, with Robert in tow, from the glamorous environs of the Neiman Marcus beauty salon to questionable surgery offices and finally to a storefront clinic on the wrong side of Houston. Meanwhile, Robert begins his own journey away from Mother and through the local theater’s world of miscast hopefuls and thwarted ambitions---and into a romance that surprises absolutely no one but himself.

Written with a warmth and a wicked sense of fun that lighten even the most awful circumstances, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy is a sparkling debut.

More Spotlights at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Lists/Gay Novels