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BOOK REVIEW: Our Young Man

June 17, 2016

Edmund-White

Our Young Man

Edmund White

Some authors don’t need an introduction; White is one of these, his latest book covering the life of a gorgeous Frenchman, Guy, as he goes from industrial city to the top of the modelling profession in New York City, becoming the darling of Fire Island’s gay community. Like Wilde’s Dorian Grey, Guy never seems to age; at thirty-five he is still modelling, still enjoying lavish gifts from older men – though their attentions always come at a price. Ambivalently, Guy lets them believe, driven especially by the memory of growing up poor, until he finds he needs the lie to secure not only wealth, but love itself. Surveying the full spectrum of gay amorous life through the disco era and into the age of AIDS this book is a tour de force of delicate narrative tension held up to the light and prised open to our minds. White is delicious, his prose wrapping itself through and into the story like embroidery made of glass, all transparent, brittle and  sharp.

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This is a throbbing candid, piercingly erotic, breathtakingly intimate story which hides behind nothing but its own delusions. It’s mirrors and smoke again for White, a theme he loves, and the way intention, direction, desire and fate all combine to present the world to us,  and this books is him at his very best.

I was seriously impressed, once again. Treat yourself.

Recommended.

For more info or to buy the book see the publishers website here: 

Out now £16.99

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