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Fiction

The impish slug

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

A Previous Life by Edmund White

Bloomsbury, $29.99 pb, 270 pp

Fiction

The impish slug

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

Robert Dessaix is a broadcaster, essayist, and memoirist. His most recent books are His most recent book is The Time of Our Lives: Growing older well (2020) and The Pleasures of Leisure (2017).  He is also the author of several other books including the autobiography A Mother’s Disgrace (1994), the novels Night Letters (1996) and Corfu (2001), and the travel memoirs Twilight of Love (2004) and Arabesques (2008).

Robert Dessaix reviews 'A Previous Life' by Edmund White

A Previous Life

by Edmund White

Bloomsbury, $29.99 pb, 270 pp

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Comment (1)

  • 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.
    Posted by Helen Covernton
    26 April 2022