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Leonce Gaiter
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A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom Kindle Edition

by Leonce Gaiter (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings
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A PW Booklife "Editor's Pick" - "Gaiter defies conventional prose to offer a lyrical narrative that is both tender in recollection and brutal in anger…"

“Gaiter’s lively prose presses against the confines of every sentence…" Kirkus Reviews

“…a bold novel. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal, the prose is always thoroughly engrossing. - IndieReader

"If Ernest Hemingway was black, gay, and writing about growing up in the [1960s], he would have written something like Leonce Gaiter's 'A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom.'" - Jessica Dickenson, "Reader Views"

5 stars "…a rich tapestry of emotions and experiences that draw you into the action as if you’re witnessing it firsthand…" - K.C. Finn, "Reader’s Favorite"

"Loved it! I loved the author’s writing style, character development and overall message of learning to live in your truth.” - Marquita Douglas, "Reedsy"

“Gaiter’s wonderfully evocative language, filled with musicality, captures the complexity of Jessie’s emotions as he struggles to make sense of his sexuality and place in the world.” - Blue Ink Review

A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom is a modern, jazzy take on the bildungsroman that uses everything from personal memoir, a fugue-like structure, poetry, images, lyrics, and diaries to paint a vivid, eloquent portrait of gay, black, Jessie Vincent Grandier and the striving African American middle class that spawned him in the late 1950s.

Born to a high-yellow, upper-crust New Orleans Creole mother and a lowborn, Louisiana bayou-bred, military father, Jessie steadfastly battles to reconcile his existence with expectations and preconceptions of those around him -- black and white. He shoulders the weight of his black bourgeois family’s hopes through the ‘60s and ‘70s, his mother’s death, and the resulting familial melodrama that tears him and his family apart. If not broken, then seemingly irreparably bent, he wends his way through Harvard in the ‘70s and drinks his way through the Reagan ‘80s in gay bars from the LA barrio to Beverly Hills. When Jessie’s grandiose ambitions have abandoned him - when he’s almost beaten, and when it’s a breath away from too late, he looks back, regards the jagged shards of his life and pieces them into a remarkable whole.

The post-modern writing careens from pure ribaldry, to brutal honesty, to deeply tender, to “gonzoesque,” but at the intelligent heart of the novel is the internal struggle of dislocation, and the deconstruction of an African-American family. It is a completely unique look at race, sex, and finding redemption the hard way.
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  1. Print length
    338 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    June 24, 2024
  4. File size
    9.7 MB
  5. Page Flip
    Not Enabled
  6. Word Wise
    Not Enabled
  7. Enhanced typesetting
    Not Enabled
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A PW Booklife "Editor's Pick" - "Gaiter defies conventional prose to offer a lyrical narrative that is both tender in recollection and brutal in anger... The novel's challenges and charged insights will reward those fascinated by the pain and work of self-invention."


"Gaiter's lively prose presses against the confines of every sentence... A distinctive, fragmentary story of an artist's painful coming of age." - Kirkus Reviews


"...a bold novel. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal, the prose is always thoroughly engrossing." - IndieReader


5 stars "...a rich tapestry of emotions and experiences that draw you into the action as if you're witnessing it firsthand where it happened. From the ribald humor to the raw honesty and tender moments, the novel offers a multifaceted exploration of identity, family, and societal pressures with elegant use of dialogue and intimate narrative moments of true vulnerability and pain." - K.C. Finn, Reader's Favorite


"If Ernest Hemingway was black, gay, and writing about growing up in the [1960s], he would have written something like Leonce Gaiter's "A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom"... Although the whole book is written in the third person, that is easy to forget since the book is so personal that Jessie and his struggles are your own." - Jessica Dickenson, Reader Views


"In Leonce Gaiter's autofiction novel, black male identity is artfully examined through the personal history of an aspiring black writer who dreams of Hollywood success. Gaiter's wonderfully evocative language, filled with musicality, captures the complexity of Jessie's emotions as he struggles to make sense of his sexuality and place in the world." - Blue Ink Review


"Loved it! I loved the author's writing style, character development and overall message of learning to live in your truth." Marquita Douglas, Reedsy

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CZBDF8D7
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Legba Books (June 24, 2024)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 24, 2024
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 9.7 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Not enabled
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 338 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

About the author

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Leonce Gaiter

Leonce Gaiter

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Leonce Gaiter is the author of "A Memory of Fictions (or) Just - Tiddy-Boom," the thriller, "I am the Whore and the Holy One," the historical novel, "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang," the coming of age novel, "In the Company of Educated Men," and the noir thriller, "Bourbon Street." His non-fiction work includes, "Whites Shackled Themselves to Race, and Blacks Have Yet to Free Ourselves." Other nonfiction pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, LA Weekly, NY Newsday, The Washington Post, Salon, and in national syndication.

Raised in New Orleans, Washington D.C., Germany, Missouri, Maryland and elsewhere, Leonce Gaiter was the quintessential rootless army brat. He began writing in grade school and continued the habit through his graduation from Harvard. After studying film and English literature, he moved to Los Angeles and worked in the creative and business ends of the film and music industries for several years. Leaving Los Angeles, he subsequently stumbled into B2B marketing for major high tech firms.

What I like to write:

In fiction, I like to write about the extraordinary. I have little interest in domestic drama, in small tales of internal struggle. I want to read and write characters who are larger than life. I certainly don't want to read or write about people who are "just like me." I'm fascinated by those infinitely grander than I will ever be, willing to risk more, grasp more, love more, hate more, whose time and place demands more than you or I can probably imagine having to give... I guess it's my Southern Gothic roots. In non-fiction, I focus on the perceptions of "race" and their vast ramifications.

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Sh H & Educator 550974
    5.0 out of 5 stars A mini series waiting to be filmed
    Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2024
    NetGalley ARC Educator 550974

    A wonderful and endearing look into the life of an LGBTQ male elder. This book takes you on a journey through family relationships, adolescence and adulthood. I often found myself wondering how much was fiction, if any. I can see this being a movie series, told over the course of a week and the film becoming a cult favorite.

    You will not want to put this book down.
    2 people found this helpful
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