Status
Available
Call number
Publication
New York : Bloomsbury, 2012.
Description
Traces the decades-long friendship of Jack Holmes and Will Wright, which is marked by Jack's secret love for Will, Will's marriage in spite of conflicted sexual feelings, and the devastating rise of AIDS.
User reviews
LibraryThing member SigmundFraud
Pitch perfect. I prefer Jack's story to Will's which isn't as well told. White feels more at home with Jack than with Will.
LibraryThing member aulsmith
As usual, White's prose is stunning and his characters well-drawn, but that wasn't enough to get me through this tale of a straight man's sexual crises. There's a lot of meditations on the differences between straight and gay relationships, which I thought were interesting but would have made a
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better essay. People with more tolerance than I for the standard character-driven modern novel will probably like this more than I did. Show Less
LibraryThing member yooperprof
This book was given to me so I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it.
It's my first Edmund White novel and makes me disinclined to read another.
The novel depicts a friendship between two American men, one gay, one straight, of the generation that came of age in the late 1950s and 60s. But they are
It also doesn't help matters both of the main characters in this book come across as rather shallow, boring, and narcissistic. And they don't seem to really like one another very much, either.
There are better American novels about the New York gay experience in the 1960s and 70s: "Dancer From the Dance" by Andrew Holleran is one.
(It's probably misleading, and maybe even irresponsible, to suggest as White clearly does that gay men who are "tops" do not need to worry about contracting HIV/AIDS.)
It's my first Edmund White novel and makes me disinclined to read another.
The novel depicts a friendship between two American men, one gay, one straight, of the generation that came of age in the late 1950s and 60s. But they are
Show More
both privileged and seem to be oblivious to the social or cultural changes that make this such an interesting era of history. But these are not characters who pay attention to things like the Civil Rights movement, or the Vietnam War, let alone the Stonewall Riots.It also doesn't help matters both of the main characters in this book come across as rather shallow, boring, and narcissistic. And they don't seem to really like one another very much, either.
There are better American novels about the New York gay experience in the 1960s and 70s: "Dancer From the Dance" by Andrew Holleran is one.
(It's probably misleading, and maybe even irresponsible, to suggest as White clearly does that gay men who are "tops" do not need to worry about contracting HIV/AIDS.)
Show Less
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2014)
Green Carnation Prize (Longlist — 2012)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction/Poetry — 2012)
ALA Over the Rainbow Book List (Selection — Fiction — 2013)
Language
Original publication date
2012-01-17
Physical description
400 p.; 8.3 inches
ISBN
1608197034 / 9781608197033
Local notes
OCLC = 351
Other editions
Jack Holmes and His Friend: A Novel by Edmund White (Paperback)