Author(s): Edmund White

Biography/Memoir

First published in 1982, White's semi-autobiographical novel became an instant classic. It is regarded as one of the most searing and glorious evocations of a child on the brink of maturity.Set on the hot streets and cool lawns of 50s America, A Boy's Own Story is a troubled elegy to adolescence. The narrator, in love with and fearful of his distant father and erratic mother, searches for love and adventure in the affluent homes and exotic backstreets of his town. He longs for the delights of maturity, while absorbing the loneliness and bruised desires of the adults around him. White's exhilarating, intimate and honest account will haunt the child's soul in every reader.'The boy's self-portrait shines with authenticity, he is an extraordinary but plausible mixture of sweetness and deviousness.Add to this the fact that White's prose is marvellously sensual while his eye is sharply satiric and you have something of the flavour of an outstanding text which should appeal to a wide audience. The book goes beyond its homosexual theme to say something about the whole process of growing up'GUARDIAN