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Absolutely Revolting
Fiction

The impish slug

Edmund White’s masochistic metafiction
by Robert Dessaix •
April 2022, no. 441

A Previous Life by Edmund White

Bloomsbury, $29.99 pb, 270 pp

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ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

Edmund White (photograph by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Alamy)
Edmund White (photograph by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Alamy)

What a performance this novel is! And not just in the virtuoso sense. What an exhausting mishmash of contradictions: snobbery, self-abasement, campery, stock masculinity. The whole pastiche is laced with vivid images of what it means to be finally old and ugly.

 


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A Previous Life by Edmund White

Bloomsbury, $29.99 pb, 270 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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Comments

Helen Covernton
Tuesday, 26 April 2022 13:38
Oh dear! Narcissim through a mocking looking glass. Robert Dessaix excellent review of Edmund White's A Previous Life exoses the sad, seedy, and senseless side of snobbery.

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