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Jack Holmes And His Friend (2012)

by Edmund White(Favorite Author)

3.56 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1408805790 (ISBN13: 9781408805794)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Bloomsbury UK

review 1: I really wanted this to be good, because I've read some Edmund White, and at the beginning it felt good, because here was that Edmund White again, the master of beautiful comparisons, the one who thought of the sun that "pulsed feebly like the aura of a migraine that doesn't develop" and "the windblown hair intricate as Velasquez's rendering of lace", and all that. But then something falls utterly short in this novel and yet I can't name it. The characters seem to be taken out of a magazine, and it's all glamorous, and sexy, and Catholic, and liberating, and it all ends with the AIDS crisis. I could not sympathize with any of the characters because they seem to be lacking substance, and the point of view shifts from the third person to the first person and back, and that s... moreeems to be done just for the sake of artifice. And now it feels like I haven't even read it. Though I do remember some of White's comparisons.
review 2: The word that comes to mind is dreck. My book group just discussed today and we were all roundly disappointed. What was the point? The characters were so flat, it was all about sexual encounters, there was really nothing to this book other than sex. No one had any epiphanies, there was no one to sympathize with and the ending was the lamest "let's tie it all up and put a bow on it" of all time. Jack had been warned and now he has a partner! Will came back to his senses! His son even thinks he's cool because he knows gay men! BAD. less

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