Nonfiction Chronicle.

GIRL BOY GIRL How I Became JT LeRoy. By Savannah Knoop. Seven Stories, paper, $17.95. A handful of impostors and frauds have given memoir a bad rap recently. And Knoop doesn't inspire much confidence in the genre with a preface that includes this disclaimer: ''Any factual errors are unintentional.'' Well, as long as she's upfront about it. In 2006, The New York Times revealed that the homeless adolescent prostitute turned novelist JT LeRoy (beloved by Tatum O'Neal, Courtney Love and other celebrities known for their sound judgment) never really existed. A woman named Laura Albert was the actual author. The person who had appeared publicly as LeRoy for six years -- decked out in a goofy wig and sunglasses -- was Albert's sister-in-law, Knoop, a college dropout who was busing tables before taking on the role. The reader longs to know what Knoop's friends and family thought of this arrangement, and what happened after the truth came out. But she offers little detail about the non-JT parts of her life in ''Girl Boy Girl'' and spends the bulk of her time chronicling the celebrities she fooled and the things they ate together. (Oysters Rockefeller with Gus Van Sant! Chocolate chip pancakes at Carrie Fisher's house!) She can't seem to decide whether she's a willing participant or a hapless victim, so she paints Albert as both co-conspirator and manipulative mastermind. Knoop's love of fashion provides a leitmotif and ultimately turns into a career. If this were an ''E! True Hollywood Story,'' the final minutes would have shots of her sketching dresses while a voice-over informed us that she'd finally found her calling. This sort of pat ending is hardly ever satisfying, but the woman who became notorious for portraying the surface level of LeRoy is willing to show us only so much of herself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]