A review by natesbookstack
Our Young Man by Edmund White

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.