BOOKS
"Head-tossing, high-strung comedy....theatrical flair and outlandish humor....superhumanly snappy....gallows humor with sprightly flair...artfully acerbic.”
--Janet Maslin, The New York Times
THE MEMOIRS OF A BEAUTIFUL BOY
(2008) St. Martins Press
"...first-time author Leleux proves he’s already a master of the snappy one-liner and the improbably hilarious in this rollicking, bitter-sweet (emphasis on the bitter) coming-of-age memoir. Featuring a larger-than life mother addicted to shopping and surgical makeovers, Leleux admits to having “tilted” the story so that it “reads better (as in funnier, or happier) than it was lived”; still, it’s a rocky trip that obviously required a highly evolved sense of humor to get through (fortunately, Leleux makes himself as big a
target as his extravagant mother). Beginning with his father’s abandonment when Leleux was 17, the author traces the erratic aftermath in the home of his desperate mom, whose plan to remarry rich leads her to pursue a risky and exorbitant series of surgical enhancements, turning inside-out Leleux’s hope that “the end of marriage [would be] only the beginning of plastic surgery and happy new lives.” In the meantime, Robert meets and unexpectedly falls in love with Michael Leleux, learning for the first time that he’s gay and, further, that his mom has already known. Not for the timid, this laugh-out-loud tale of dysfunction and discovery is a compulsively readable treat; any fan of Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris owes it to themselves to pick it up."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
THE LIVING END, A MEMOIR OF
FORGETTING AND FORGIVING
(2011) St. Martins Press
“The Living End is Robert Leleux's exceptionally moving memoir about his beloved grandmother and his heroic caring for her as she slipped into the grip of Alzheimer’s. The book is at times hilarious, tender, and heartbreaking—further proof that Mr. Leleux is ripening into one of the best prose stylists in America.”
—Pat Conroy
“Robert Leleux sets off on a journey that will be familiar to many Baby Boomers - watching a beloved elder painfully slipping away - but his version of the tale is singularly bittersweet, funny, and empathetic. It's a rare thing to find a memoir of illness that can be described as cheerful, but this one is that - and much more.”
—Mark Childress, author of Georgia Bottoms and Crazy in Alabama
“Robert Leleux's hilarious and poignant memoir of his fractured family takes an unexpected, wholly satisfying turn at the end: as lives ebb, memories fail, and long-withheld loves emerge.”
—John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
and The City of Falling Angels