What Becomes of the Brokenhearted
A Memoir
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4.6 • 10 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
For almost a decade, beloved storyteller E. Lynn Harris has welcomed you into his family with his passionate, warm and trail-blazing novels. Now, he invites you into the most intimate world ever--his own.
Since his first book Invisible Life was published in the early 1990s, New York Times bestselling author E. Lynn Harris has wowed, charmed and romanced millions of readers. As a master storyteller, E. Lynn Harris has created an intimate and glamorous world centered around his signature themes of love, friendship and family. People all over the world have fallen in love with his characters and laughed and cried with them.
Now, in his most daring act yet, E. Lynn Harris writes the memoir of his life–from his childhood in Arkansas as a closeted gay boy through his struggling days as a self-published author to his rise as a New York Times bestselling author. In What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, E. Lynn Harris shares an extraordinary life touched by loneliness and depression, but more important, he reveals the triumphant life of a small-town dreamer who was able through writing to make his dreams–and more–come true.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With his bestselling novels (And This Too Shall Pass; Abide with Me; etc.) Harris has carved out a niche as a writer of jaunty books with melodramatic plots, usually centering on gay or bisexual black men with riches and rippling biceps. In stark contrast, Harris's memoir is free of the fancy trappings his characters enjoy, starting with the author's suicide attempt in 1990, before he decided to become a writer. From this beginning, Harris goes back to his birth in 1955 and proceeds chronologically, detailing abuse by his stepfather, the awakenings of sexual desire for other men and the discovery of his biological father. Some passages ache for more detail, as when Harris offhandedly mentions working in a brothel at age 13. More often, though, the pace is fitting, giving the book a sense of forward motion as strong as the thoughts of young Harris, dreaming of escape from his native Arkansas. Although he suffers traumas and frustrations as a child, Harris's love life is most heartbreaking. His struggle to find love as an African-American Southern man led to a series of disappointing relationships that taxed Harris's tenderhearted, affectionate nature. He tells this part of his story with such simplicity and straightforwardness, it seems distilled, stripped down to its barest elements until only the clearest emotions remain. Readers of Harris's novels should be surprised at how far from charmed his life was, compared to the troubled but ultimately blissful lives of his fictional characters. Yet they should appreciate the deep honesty with which he describes each stumble and fall. (On sale July 8)
Customer Reviews
Loved
Loved, loved, and loved some more!!
What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted
If you haven't read this book, please do so. Very touching....I could read it over and over...