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natesbookstack's review against another edition
4.0
First I will begin with a personal story. Before I came out to anyone, but my own brain, I thirsted for anything of the gay experience. One day at the bookstore I saw the Vintage paperback cover of The Beautiful Room is Empty. Green with the photo of a shirtless boy, I read the back and said I need this, but too afraid to buy I borrowed it from the library. Very quickly through several novels by Edmund I said ok the time has come to live your truth. Fast forward over a decade since I read my last Edmund White novel I felt a need to read this one and I was not disappointed. Our Young Man is very easy to push aside as a novel about a narcissistic man who like Dorian Gray does not seem to age. What I found about our lead Guy was that he is much more complicated and human then I think some people see. He is trying to navigate a world where he is so beautiful that men are throwing themselves at him but at the end of the day still remembers the poor kid he grew up as. I found this novel to be romantic, the love he has in various forms through his life. Also no one writes a sex scene like Edmund. This is a visual novel that needs to be read.
gerhard's review
5.0
It takes a brave writer to stage a comedy setpiece in the St Vincent AIDS ward in New York in the 1980s. There are certain things that comedy seems barred from tackling: 9/11, the Holocaust, Nelson Mandela and Apartheid, HIV/AIDS. But Edmund White knows instinctively that absurdity is the flipside of tragedy, and to highlight the former accentuates the latter.
I do not think I have ever enjoyed a gay novel as much as I did White’s latest. Who would have thought that White could pull off a screwball (gay) comedy, and skewer so many sacred (gay) cows in the process? After all, this is the highly-lauded writer who gave us the sturm-und-drang of [b:The Farewell Symphony|1276941|The Farewell Symphony|Edmund White|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348244317s/1276941.jpg|16186670].
That used to be my favourite gay novel ever. Until [b:Our Young Man|25663628|Our Young Man|Edmund White|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1456093619s/25663628.jpg|45486599], that is. I honestly think that White has written a [b:Faggots|109395|Faggots|Larry Kramer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348605692s/109395.jpg|105423] for our politically-overcorrect, over-capitalised, media-saturated, surface- and image-obsessed zeitgeist.
This cautionary tale of a French fashion model who miraculously never seems to age, and who twists himself into such knots of lying and misdirection to justify his life to all the people he is involved with, is written with such sass, baudiness, humour, pathos, raunchiness, crudity and insight that the reader cannot help but fall in love.
White, himself no spring chicken, clearly writes with great experience (and feeling) about the gay community’s ongoing obsession with hedonism and youth, and the awful toll this exacts on love and life. Magnificent. I defy any reader to get past White’s devastating ending without a tear in the eye. And a smile, for all the young men we have loved and known and lost.
I do not think I have ever enjoyed a gay novel as much as I did White’s latest. Who would have thought that White could pull off a screwball (gay) comedy, and skewer so many sacred (gay) cows in the process? After all, this is the highly-lauded writer who gave us the sturm-und-drang of [b:The Farewell Symphony|1276941|The Farewell Symphony|Edmund White|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348244317s/1276941.jpg|16186670].
That used to be my favourite gay novel ever. Until [b:Our Young Man|25663628|Our Young Man|Edmund White|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1456093619s/25663628.jpg|45486599], that is. I honestly think that White has written a [b:Faggots|109395|Faggots|Larry Kramer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348605692s/109395.jpg|105423] for our politically-overcorrect, over-capitalised, media-saturated, surface- and image-obsessed zeitgeist.
This cautionary tale of a French fashion model who miraculously never seems to age, and who twists himself into such knots of lying and misdirection to justify his life to all the people he is involved with, is written with such sass, baudiness, humour, pathos, raunchiness, crudity and insight that the reader cannot help but fall in love.
White, himself no spring chicken, clearly writes with great experience (and feeling) about the gay community’s ongoing obsession with hedonism and youth, and the awful toll this exacts on love and life. Magnificent. I defy any reader to get past White’s devastating ending without a tear in the eye. And a smile, for all the young men we have loved and known and lost.
zefrog's review
3.0
Although the book is a pleasant enough read it is also terribly written and full of careless inaccuracies in style, plot and structure (something particularly unacceptable from an author of the supposed stature of Mr White, who acknowledges the involvement of no less that FOUR editors on this project!). The characters are not only paper thin and unrealistic, they also change appearance and personality as the plot goes on. The whole thing feels like a pot-boiler quickly and sloppily assembled for no obvious reason.
p50: "He opened a white paper bag and pulled out a croissant, found a plate in the cupboard, and ate it."
p50: "He opened a white paper bag and pulled out a croissant, found a plate in the cupboard, and ate it."
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