Edmund White - My Lives

Edmund White's My Lives contains ten short self-contained chapters, exploring different aspects of his life, concentrating on the personal rather than a work exploring his writing. These range from his relationships with his mother and father, to his shrinks, to hustlers, sexual partners, friends and to Europe and to Jean Genet. The book is frank, honest and engrossing. White brings the benefit of time past and age to looking back on a life well-lived, as well as a writers keen eye for telling a good story. My Lives outlines (for me) some sense of what it would be to have lived as a gay man (albeit a privileged one) in a different country in different times - both more repressed and more free.