A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White

In A Boy’s Own Story, the author documents his coming of age in the 1950’s while grappling with his homosexuality. The sexual encounters are explicit and exaggerated to ensure the reader is attentive to the prose.

Had the sexual details been omitted, it would have been just as effective in delivering the angst of the teen years and the feelings of isolation and hopelessness.

It’s easy to imagine Edmund wringing his hands as he navigates his way through family conflicts, acknowledges his sexuality and interacts with people living in their own unique ways.

Edmund’s father is a successful businessman who lives in a world all his own. He is well aware of all those that surround him, but never feels comfortable speaking openly and honestly to anyone. He is a solitary man pretending to be sociable and has not truly lived the life he was fortunate enough to have.

Marilyn, a bookstore clerk is one of Edmund’s true friends who shows him that being different is not being imperfect. The time they spend together seems to bring peace to them both.

Mr. & Mrs. Scott are two horrendous individuals who take advantage of young Edmund to feed their own sexual desires. Mr. Scott teaches Latin at a boarding school and feigns friendship with Edmund to conceal his own homosexual desires.

Quotes:

My father regarded guests as nuisances who had to be entertained over and over again.

…the imagination is not the consolation people pretend. It can even be regarded as the admission of some sort of failure.

I say all this by way of hoping that the lies I’ve made up to get from one poor truth to another may mean something–may even mean something most particular to you, my eccentric, patient, scrupulous reader, wiling to make so much of so little, more patient and more respectful of life, of a life, that the author you’re allowing for a moment to exist yet again.

And so on for hours, pure ventriloquism, nausea of small talk, a discipline nearly Oriental in its exclusion of content and its focus on empty locutions, the chatter of social fear confused with yearning, for I not only feared my friends, I also wanted to make them love me.

Given the opportunity to meet with Mr. White, I would ask if his upbringing were so painful that he’d rather put pen to paper on his supposed illicit sexual encounters than divulge his family secrets. I felt cheated in that he was hiding his authentic self and using sex as a way of distracting the reader from being awares.

My rating for A Boy’s Own Story is a 6 out of 10.

Please share your own reviews or comments by using the Leave A Comment link below.

Next up , Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie…