Mike Shea on the month’s new releases
Robert Leleux
St. Martin’s
(Read an excerpt)
Buy this at BookPeople.com
We’ll take Robert Leleux at his word when he declares in The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy that, growing up in tiny Petunia, he didn’t know he was gay until he was seventeen and unexpectedly googly-eyed over his dance instructor at a community theater. Literary license or not, the pronouncement sets up Leleux’s more memorable anecdotes (grandmother JoAnn’s reaction to his coming out: “Oh darling . . . I thought everybody was already sort of working on that assumption”) and epitomizes his declared intention to not let truth interfere with a good story. In this case, most of the good stories belong to his flamboyant mother—“the Great & Indomitable Jessica Wilson”—whose Neiman’s shopping sprees and shelves of wigs cannot change the reality that she and her family live on an East Texas farm with her redneck-riche in-laws. In a riches-to-rags twist, Daddy abandons Mother and Robert, leaving them in a state of sitcom poverty: driving the Jag to Houston to sell Ferragamo pumps and return outfits to Saks for lunches in its cafe. Now that Leleux, a 27-year-old creative writing teacher in New York, has gotten his coming-of-age story out of the way, he needs to summon up a literary perspective beyond that of professional mama’s boy. Sexual orientation may be an identity, but it should not be confused with a career. St. Martin’s, $23.95
Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay
Arcade
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Austinite Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay became a poster boy for the learning potential of autistic children with his first book, The Mind Tree, a collection of stories and poems he wrote between the ages of eight and eleven. In How Can I Talk If My Lips Don’t Move: inside My Autistic Mind, the now-eighteen-year-old tries mightily to explain how the entirety of his world—perception, reaction, logic, emotion—diverges from the average person’s. Sounds might be understood as colors; inanimate objects might take on human qualities (“I knew that the mirror heard everything because only when I stood in front of it could I hear the walls and floor talk”). But though Mukhopadhyay and his autistic brethren are wired differently than the rest of us, he clearly conveys how they have more in common with neurotypical individuals than appearances would suggest. There’s an inspirational story at the core of How Can I Talk about Tito’s mother, Soma, who tirelessly taught him to write so he could communicate, but it’s impossible to overlook the naked heartbreak of one seemingly tossed-off line: “I am not worried about hell because I have experienced it here on earth.” That is a rare insight that no ordinary tongue can tell. Arcade, $25
Kathy L. Patrick
This boisterous bookseller runs a Jefferson hair salon/bookstore, Beauty and the Book, that is a bastion of independent literary thinking—and egalitarian fun. She shares her Texas joie de vivre in The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life.
What exactly is a Pulpwood Queen?
The Pulpwood Queens are the largest “meeting and discussing” book club in the world. Our motto is “Where tiaras are mandatory and reading good books is the rule!”
Where does one buy a tiara in the year of our Lord 2007?
Everywhere from a bridal shop to Wal-Mart. I purchased my first tiara from a wholesale costume supplier in Houston, but I’ve been upgrading ever since. Tiaras leave scars on the head, but people treat you better, so my advice is, wear them out often.
What is the essence of the Pulpwood Queens’ secrets for happiness and success?
When my agent suggested my book be a guide to life, I spit my coffee across the room. She told me, “Exactly, Kathy. Who better than somebody who has lived through all your mistakes?” True happiness comes from hard work and struggle. One thing I’ve learned is, if you want to find purpose in life, read.
Grand Central, $13.99 (Read the full interview.)
The Pulpwood Queens’ Guide To Life: Kathy L. Patrick, published by Grand Central.
