BLURB:

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.

MY THOUGHTS:

A Memory of Fictions by Leonce Gaiter is one of those books that burrows deep into your soul, leaving you wrestling with the beauty and ache of it long after you’ve turned the final page. It’s a multi-layered masterpiece—both exquisite in its prose and unflinching in its truths.

The third-person narrator’s voice stands out, feeling like an entity separate from the story, observing from the outside but not immune to its weight. At times, the narrator seems to judge the characters, particularly in the early chapters when introducing the family. The tone swings between empathy and distaste, as if the narrator can’t decide whether to love or loathe these people—and honestly, isn’t that how families often feel?

Speaking of family, I’ll say this: I desperately wanted a family tree in the front of this book! You know how fantasy books give you maps to navigate their worlds? That’s what I needed here. The dynamics and relationships are intricate, and a quick reference guide would’ve been a lifesaver.

What really struck me was how deeply this book delves into the way childhood shapes us. Trauma, identity, race, sexuality, gender—it’s all there, woven into the fabric of this story, especially within the African American experience. I could see this book being dissected in a college literature class, sparking rich discussions on these themes.

Early on, there’s this stunning line about the townspeople:
“They danced at the top of the hill these women and their men, unfettered by whites and their earthbound ways. Their shops, their streets, and their world.”

This imagery reminded me of so many other works of African American literature, where the idea of being “on top of the hill” represents both community and spirituality—closer to God, further from oppression. It brought Toni Morrison’s Sula to mind, where a similar motif appears. It’s a subtle but powerful nod to the resilience and sanctity of Black spaces.

And then there’s Lulene. That scene of her sitting in the chair, discovered by Jessie—it took me straight to Nikki Giovanni’s Mothers. That moment feels like an ode to Giovanni’s work, a universal connection to our own mothers, sitting alone, lost in thought, holding grief we’ll never fully understand. It was heartbreakingly intimate.

Of course, there were moments when Lulene and Grandier made me want to scream. As a parent, some of their choices felt incomprehensible, but also painfully human. The phrase “they did their best” is one I struggle with—it feels like both an excuse and a weight. How do you know better when you’ve never been shown better? This book doesn’t shy away from those hard truths, and it’s all the more devastating for it.

And here’s a detail that might just be me overanalyzing, but I couldn’t ignore it: the date on the very last page—October 17, 2024. It’s the same date as Lulene’s death. Maybe it’s coincidence, maybe it’s deliberate, but it felt like the book’s final bow—a full-circle moment steeped in meaning.

There’s so much to unpack in A Memory of Fictions. It’s a book that demands your time, your heart, and your willingness to confront hard truths. If you haven’t picked it up yet, I hope you will. You’ll be carrying this one with you long after you’ve finished.

Thank you Books Forward for the ARC!