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Our Young Man

Our Young Man 1

by Edmund White
Paperback
Publication Date: 25/05/2016
4/5 Rating 1 Review

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A literary event - the most accomplished novel yet from one of the world's most prolific and well-respected authors.

New York City in the eighties, and at its decadent heart is Guy. Guy is taking on the fashion world and fast becoming the darling of the Fire Island's gay community. Cuddly yet depraved Fred; Andre, dealing in stolen paintings and hurtling towards prison and the abyss; Pierre-Georges, adept with acerbic asides and knowing lectures- they are all in some way fixated on Guy. And Guy, Dorian Gray-like, never ageing. Still modelling at thirty-five, still enjoying lavish, expensive gifts from those older men who all believe he's far younger, Guy lets them believe - until he finds his way of life is destroying the men he loves.

In some of the richest representations of gay male identity from the disco era to the age of AIDS, this exquisite novel explores the power of physical beauty - to fascinate, to enslave and to deceive - with sparkling wit and pathos. Fizzily immediate, artfully accomplished and a work of comic genius, it is an exquisite novel from a contemporary master.

ISBN:
9781408858943
9781408858943
Category:
Contemporary fiction
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
25-05-2016
Language:
English
Publisher:
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
304
Dimensions (mm):
230x151x24mm
Weight:
0.47kg
Edmund White

Edmund White (b. Ohio, USA, 1940) is the author of many critically acclaimed books, the most recent being The Flaneur. He was made an officer in the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and won a literary prize from the Festival of Deauville. He now teaches at Princeton University. His acclaimed autobiography, My Lives, was published by Bloomsbury in 2006, while his play, Terre Haute, was published by Methuen Drama in 2007.

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Edmund White adds another achievement to a long career of fantastic writing. Having lived a literary life between France and the USA, he has a high vantage point on Western culture and a particular sensibility in his writing which has brought in praise the world over.

In this novel we are presented with Guy, a French model and object of desire of an endless troop of American men. With a Dorian Grey-type ageless beauty, he steps from one man to the next posing for their fantasies as if relationships were contracts in his limitless career. This crescendos over the course of decades as the gay community goes from disco frivolity to the decimation of the AIDS epidemic. And it seems that poor, selfish Guy doesn't realise just how alone he is until the very end.

Blackly comic and at times a little heart-breaking, Our Young Man is a tragic portrait of the modern Western gay male.

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