Jack Holmes and His Friend

Jack Holmes is suffering from unrequited love. It doesn't look as if there will ever be anyone else he falls for: the other men he takes to bed never stay for long. Jack's friend Will Wright comes from old stock, has aspirations to be a writer and, like Jack, works on the Northern Review. Jack will introduce Will to the beautiful, brittle young woman he will marry, but is discreet about his own adventures in love - for this is sixties New York, literary and intense, before gay liberation; a concoction of old society, bohemians rich and poor, sleek European immigrants and transplanted Midwesterners. Against this charged backdrop, the different lives of Jack and Will intertwine, and as their loves come and go, they will always be, at the very least, friends. Edmund White has three voices. First there is the storyteller, relaxed, conversational, an anecdotalist, an inspired flaneur. Then there is the poet: on every page there lies in wait a metaphor of startling precision, an image that holds and reattracts the eye. And then there is the laic philosopher, who observes human life from the highest altitudes, held aloft by vast infusions of erudition and experience. In Jack Holmes and His Friend, White's trio is in frictionless accord Martin Amis This comedy of sexual manners may be White's finest novel Sunday Times Wise, funny, sympathetic and richly entertaining novel Boyd Tonkin, Independent There's a sleek, close-shaved quality to White's prose that in passages gives it the warm lubicriousness of early Updike and the dry martini sting of Cheever Financial Times It will make you smile with admiration Evening Standard Marks White out as an immensely gifted chronicler of the intricacies of the human heart Alex Clark, Guardian Lucid and powerful ... White is a novelist of great insight Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph An elegant study of the paradoxes and half-truths that emerge in long-standing friendships New Yorker White's talent remains undiminished Daily Mail