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A review by ken_bookhermit
A Previous Life by Edmund White
5.0
I loved it. Every minute and every word of it.
I can't remember how it was that I found out about Edmund White in the first place; just that I read his book of essays ([b:Arts and Letters|109719|Arts and Letters|Edmund White|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328856065l/109719._SX50_.jpg|16186764]) and lost myself in his essay on Nabokov. I really need to make better note of how I find these authors, I swear... But. I do know that Edmund White writes autobiographical fiction—and so it came as no surprise to me that he is a character in his own novel that is about him only in the secondary way (yet is still very much about him). The first half of A Previous Life centers around Constance and Ruggero, a married couple with a vast age difference between them, whereas the latter half of the book mirrors the fallout of Constance and Ruggero's marriage with the exposition of Ruggelo and Edmund's love affair.
The most interesting thing about this novel is how it manages to disrupt one's sense of time. It goes back and forth temporally but above all else, I think what messed me up the most is how the book, A Previous Life, is mentioned in the story itself as if it is a different book altogether. Or at least, that's what I want to think, given how much I'm struggling with the self-referential-ness of it all.
It amazes me how Edmund White (the writer) can talk about Edmund White (the character) in the way that he does in the novel. Self-effacing or self-aggrandizing? Who's to say?
But yes. I love how obscene and pornographic it gets in one page, and insightful and philosophical in another. I want to read everything Edmund White has ever written.
I can't remember how it was that I found out about Edmund White in the first place; just that I read his book of essays ([b:Arts and Letters|109719|Arts and Letters|Edmund White|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328856065l/109719._SX50_.jpg|16186764]) and lost myself in his essay on Nabokov. I really need to make better note of how I find these authors, I swear... But. I do know that Edmund White writes autobiographical fiction—and so it came as no surprise to me that he is a character in his own novel that is about him only in the secondary way (yet is still very much about him). The first half of A Previous Life centers around Constance and Ruggero, a married couple with a vast age difference between them, whereas the latter half of the book mirrors the fallout of Constance and Ruggero's marriage with the exposition of Ruggelo and Edmund's love affair.
The most interesting thing about this novel is how it manages to disrupt one's sense of time. It goes back and forth temporally but above all else, I think what messed me up the most is how the book, A Previous Life, is mentioned in the story itself as if it is a different book altogether. Or at least, that's what I want to think, given how much I'm struggling with the self-referential-ness of it all.
It amazes me how Edmund White (the writer) can talk about Edmund White (the character) in the way that he does in the novel. Self-effacing or self-aggrandizing? Who's to say?
But yes. I love how obscene and pornographic it gets in one page, and insightful and philosophical in another. I want to read everything Edmund White has ever written.