A Previous Life
Bloomsbury, $29.99 pb, 270 pp
Fiction
The impish slug
Edmund White’s masochistic metafiction
by Robert Dessaix •

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.
Continue reading for only $10 per month. Subscribe and gain full access to Australian Book Review. Already a subscriber? Sign in. If you need assistance, feel free to contact us.
Comment (1)