A review by sam_bizar_wilcox
A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White

2.0

White's prose and aesthetic intuitions are divine. Too bad the narrative it clothes is, regrettably, boring. I was intrigued by the opening narrative: two boys, one "straight," engage in risque anal sex under the noses of their fathers, in a chapter that reflects on patriarchal relationships and what it means to be a good son. But even this chapter, with its taboo subject matter and deep excavation of a character's psyche, showed signs of White's propensity to veer off on tangents and loosely (too tenuously) connect ideas within a larger narrative. There were moments in this novel, such as his high school affection for the sporty/philosphical Tom, that were interesting and resonant, but most of the time I was put off by White's grandeur, verbosity, and narcissism.