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A review by anpu325
A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
3.0
cw: pedophilia, sexual abuse
This was a really hard book to capture my thoughts about. In one sense, the author's prose was beautiful. Also, the fact that the author, and thus protagonist in this basically autobiographical book, went to the same high school as me and had queer experiences there was fascinating. Like double exposed film, he inhabited the same places I had, in a different time and as a gay cisgender man rather than a trans person, but it was moving nonetheless.
However, my like of this book was soured by a seeming lack of disapproval for pedophilia as well as racist tropes being used to describe characters. Also the fact that the protagonist takes advantage of someone who was developmentally disabled for sex. His actions made me feel sick and it was hard to sympathize with him, especially since the book appears very autobiographical, so I can only assume these are things that the author actually did.
This was a really hard book to capture my thoughts about. In one sense, the author's prose was beautiful. Also, the fact that the author, and thus protagonist in this basically autobiographical book, went to the same high school as me and had queer experiences there was fascinating. Like double exposed film, he inhabited the same places I had, in a different time and as a gay cisgender man rather than a trans person, but it was moving nonetheless.
However, my like of this book was soured by a seeming lack of disapproval for pedophilia as well as racist tropes being used to describe characters. Also the fact that the protagonist takes advantage of someone who was developmentally disabled for sex. His actions made me feel sick and it was hard to sympathize with him, especially since the book appears very autobiographical, so I can only assume these are things that the author actually did.