This is not the book for me. I wasn’t very engaged with it. It is so dull. I didn’t like the writing style.

It’s 2050 and a married couple in a Swiss ski resort decide to entertain themselves by each recounting their past sexual exploits. Constance is African-American in her 30s and Ruggero is her elderly bisexual Sicilian aristocratic husband. An unlikely pair, perhaps, but apparently devoted to each other and more than happy to explore their pasts. Why 2050? Apparently so that Ruggero can reminisce about his affair 30 years earlier with a writer called – Edmund White. I’m not clear what the point of this book was, unless to indulge in a stream of graphic sexual encounters of all shapes and sizes. Self-referential, self-indulgent, this is simply pornography pretending to be high literature. It isn’t. It’s not funny, not clever and not entertaining. Well, it wasn’t for me, anyway. I found it tedious and gave up quite early on. Nothing about this unconvincing couple encouraged me to learn more about them. So I didn’t.

I wanted to love this but it was just all over the place.
The openness of sexuality was fantastic, and I loved the sexual freedom, yet the actual story structure was a mess. It all felt so disorganised and messy, which made it even harder to read. Some themes may be uncomfortable for some people, so I recommend doing a little research before picking up (e.g. degradation).

A strange book that could've been good, but sadly let down by a messy structure.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I had heard wonderful things about this title but unfortunately after persevering several times I could not get into it.

A married couple, Ruggero and Constance, confess their lives and loves before they knew each other. On themes of sexuality and aging.

A Previous Life is explicit and humorous, but off-balance. Ruggero’s narcissistic voice is stronger than that of Constance, whose character comes across as a quick sketch by a disinterested author.

While set in 2050, the novel tracks back over several decades. Its overall flavour is very retro.

White’s writing is engaging and, at times, ingenious.

My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the ARC.

This was a weird but interesting read.. I liked the prose and the story it explored but in places, i got kind of confused as there was a narrative jump and there were points that i missed when reading it. This was generally a good book but the middle takes a weird turn i wasn't expecting and this kind of threw me off. It does get a bit meta and self-referential, and this didn't entirely work for me as i didn't know a great deal of White's previous works.

I loved other books by Edmund White and was excited to read this one.
The premise sounded really interesting and, even if I liked the storytelling, I couldn't care for the characters that I found a bit too self-centered.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

So when I read this particular section on page 1:

'With each flattering supposition, he relaxed. He sat back down. He looked at her as if verifying her degree of sophistication. At last he smiled.'

...I knew then that i was already in trouble. I respect Edmund White and his long and important career, but I simply could not engage with this book at all. Wordy, verbose - call it what you will, but the two central characters and their sexual self-obsession just left me cold. I admired White's attempt to write himself into the narrative as a character, but somehow it felt just that, a literary device for the sake of it. Nope. Better people than I seem to have liked this, so I will just move on to something else that I will enjoy. Sorry, but only 2 stars from me.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

Afraid I really struggled with this - couldn’t buy in to the characters and was unconvinced they had grown up in the decades they were describing - and so it all rather failed to hold my attention. So much sex, yet so much boredom (and maybe that’s the point, and I’m not getting it).

A very minor Edmund white work, IMO.

I feel I wanted to love this one so much but it slightly fell short for me, but that is purely personal preference and it has many things in which people will absolute adore. We visit a flawed marriage and each member of the couple has a story to tell and secrets to unburden. the both write the stories of their lives to inform the other of everything that has transpired before they met, they then read these out to each other reading of relationships from their pasts with different men and women. At times I was captivated but at times I found myself not eager to pick it back up, maybe I read it at the wrong time but I’d be intrigued to know what more people think about this one.
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Thank you to Bloomsbury & Netgalley for the ARC

This book is at turns both hilarious and deeply sad, charting the relationships between many characters, not least Edmund White himself, who appears as a character, and, at one point, so does this novel.

The self-referential nature of it all seems bizarre when you begin the book, but for me, it soon transformed into something quite profound, almost as if Edmund White is playing out his deepest fears, insecurities and fantasies in these pages.

Fantasy appears heavily throughout, and the book is absolutely unapologetic and unflinching in its discussions of sex and sexuality, often getting incredibly graphic (about 5 pages in there is a detailed discussion of girth that is hilariously written). But again there is something deeper going on beneath its surface- the fantasies borne out in the book at the beginning start to be viewed through new eyes the further through the book you get, with sexuality feeling both liberating and also constraining, particularly when it comes to ageing and trying to assess one's own worth when your looks might place you outside of easy categorisation as 'attractive' or 'sexy'.

As White and his lover, friend and confidant Ruggero reveal more, told through Ruggero and Constance (and occasionally other characters) telling their stories, we piece together what White thinks of it all, told through the eyes of people writing about him after his death.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I had never read Edmund White before and did not really know what to expect. ‘Shocked’ is a big word, but it was certainly an unusual and surprising reading experience. Some of it worked very well, some parts where rather tedious and repetitive and I grew tired towards the end.

It all starts interesting enough: a married couple, 70-year old Sicilian aristocrat and narcissist Ruggero and his much younger American wife Constance, decide to write and then read aloud to each other their respective memoirs. Both are very honest and open and of course they are especially interested in their partner’s former lovers: why did they break up, does he/she think the same way about me? Both are bi-sexual which in a way brings in an interesting additional tension. But the biggest element of interest is the age difference, which is the main theme this novel explores. What is also interesting is that the novel is set in 2050, which gives them about 30 years to look back at our current times.

I could not help feeling though that this set-up, which as such is intriguing, served primarily a device for the author to expand on whatever it was he wanted to expand (or perhaps ‘chat’ is a better word) on. In this order his main interests are: (gay) sex, age and age difference, everything Italian (the Italian frequently interspersed in the text is ok but not great) and classical music. I felt the consistency of the characters was less important than giving them an extra hobby or extra lover just so that Edmund White could show off what he had recently learned.

Boredom set in when Ruggero’s romance with the much older author Edmund White was described at length. The metafictional element had no real function for me, but perhaps it does for Edmund White. He doesn’t spare himself (describing his diaper rashes and the fact he will be forgotten in 30 years), and is very open about his sexual preferences, but I was neither offended nor interested.

So, 4 stars for the first half and 2 stars for the second makes 3.

Thanks a lot to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced reading copy!

I so wanted to like Edmund White's novel more, but I found its exploration of love, identity, sexual orientation and fluidity, and the ageing process, turned out to be a mixed reading experience for me. Set in the future of 2050, we have the flawed married couple, Sicilian Ruggero is in his seventies, his mixed race American wife, Constance, is considerably younger, an accident has confined the pair in their Swiss chalet. Both of them of them had been reticient about their personal histories in their marriage, present circumstances provide them with the opportunity to open up, to 'confess' their past, from their childhoods to their relationships through the decades. They each write of their lives, and then read of it to each other, of their numerous relationships with men and women. For Ruggero, for it is he who holds centre stage in comparison to Constance who comes across as a minor sideshow, it includes a crucial but doomed relationship with the author and its repercussions, yes, White has inserted himself in the story, where he is now a barely remembered writer. Whilst I found aspects of the narrative interesting, even fun and captivating, other parts failed to connect, and some aspects were distinctly unsettling. Perhaps others will enjoy this novel more. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

A married couple, Ruggero and Constance, confess their lives and loves before they knew each other. On themes of sexuality and aging.

A Previous Life is explicit and humorous, but off-balance. Ruggero’s narcissistic voice is stronger than that of Constance, whose character comes across as a quick sketch by a disinterested author.

While set in 2050, the novel tracks back over several decades. Its overall flavour is very retro.

White’s writing is engaging and, at times, ingenious.

My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the ARC.

A Previous Life pushes for a broader understanding of sexual orientation and explores the themes of love and age through numerous eyes, hearts and minds.

'A Previous Life' by Edmund White applies the authors talent for memoir to a fictional world. Ruggero a seventy year old aristocratic musician and Constance his middle aged wife, have a co-dependent marriage, where Constance in particular fears losing Ruggero to another lover, or to death. The two have previously agreed not to share their pasts for fear of distressing the other, but decide (after talking about Ruggero's love affair with the author) to write their memoirs and read them to one another. Shut away together in a ski chalet after Ruggero has an accident and breaks his leg, the two read about their past sex lives. Constance talks about her multiple marriages to older men, and Ruggero his love affairs with men and women across his life time, the most important of which is with Edmund White.

I have previously read two or three of White's memoirs and essay collections, but not his novels. Whilst this story is supposed to be set in the future, it felt very old fashioned to me, and would have been more ideally set in the 1970's. This was partly due to the gender stereotypes in the novel, the settings, and the style of writing (which reminded me quite a bit of Milan Kundera). From the first page of the novel Ruggero talks about his penis, and indeed when he first meets Constance at a dinner party, makes reference to it. This made him seem very predatory and exploitative, and instead of breaking sexual barriers the novel felt constrained by them.

At first I felt drawn to this story. "A Previous Life" is set in 2050, in a reality where being sexually fluid is highly normalised and sexual expression outside heteronormative paradigm doesn't seem to shock anyone, but is rather embraced. Seems like a great backdrop for such an intimate story.

I couldn't shake the feeling that main male character, Ruggero, with his grandiosity and admirable lifestyle is a pure example of Gary Stu. And as I was shrugging at the act of self-insert, the character of Edmund White (the author himself) came in. It was both strange, and intriguing, but did not help the overall monotony of the story. Especially that the female protagonist, Constance, and her motivations were written as way less multidimensional than the male characters in this book.

Very much an old man’s novel—looking back on “a previous life” with a fair modicum of self-mockery in the character of “Edmund White.”. It’s an erudite novel, enjoyable if not one of White’s best.

Y’know, considering I’ve never even met Edmund White, I feel I know way too much about his sex life. The easily admirable aspects of his nature, like his enthusiasm, his self-indulgence, his curiosity and his openness to experience. And the more complex ones, like the masochism, and his far from politically correct obsession with, uh, intergenerational relationships? (I know it was written in the 70s but there’s stuff in there about being with11-year-old boys). But there’s something so inescapably charming about Edmund White, as a person, and as a writer. I mean, he’s extra fuck, always has been, but that’s what you sign up for.

And A Previous Life is no different. Being a playful—and at times poignant—piece of metatext that is, in other ways, so outlandish I’m still not quite sure how to process it. The book opens semi-reasonably enough with a husband (Ruggero) and wife (Constance) temporarily trapped together in a Swiss chalet after he breaks his leg skiing: of particular note are the differences between them, both in age (he’s in his 70s, she her 40s) and cultural background (she’s a mixed-race orphan from small-town America, he’s a wealthy Sicilian aristocrat). Since they’ve never spoken about their past lives to each other, they decide to write their ‘confessions’ and read them aloud to pass the time. Hovering like a spectre over said confessions is the knowledge of Ruggero’s previous love affair with the writer Edmund White, in his eighties at the time they were together. I should also note, the book is set in 2050—with White long dead, his legacy reduced to that of an obscure gay writer, from a future where queer liberation has become as passe as feminism.

Constance—terrified of the inevitable abandonment in loving someone significantly older than she is—ultimately leaves Ruggero for a staid, kind American lover of her own age who can give her the family that Ruggero refuses to. The second half of the novel drifts increasingly from the conceit of the first, as we delve—via emails and second accounts—into the details of Ruggero’s intense but doomed affair with Edmund White. And finally still further into the future where both Constance and Ruggero have found their own happiness, apart from each other.

I mean, there’s no getting away from the fact that this is intensely readable, intensely weird and—on occasion—intensely problematic? Because Constance and Ruggero are both bisexual there’s a lot of examination, from both of them, in the early sections about the differences between men and women, sexually, emotionally, and socially. It was hard to pin down an exact time frame for what felt like quite outdated views of gender and sexuality, and to be fair those views do seem to change across the course of the book. Obviously, they’re both very flawed characters, equally damaged in their different ways, and Ruggero a charismatic narcissist obsessed with his own masculinity, plus the idea that every character can only manifest whatever is currently deemed the appropriate view of their sexuality identity is nonsense. That is not what fiction is for. Even so, as a person … well … I don’t identify as bisexual but gender identity doesn’t play into attraction for me … it felt a bit odd to witness two people describing and articulating their fluid sexual identities in a way that was wholly alienating to me. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever sat there with a lover and made declarative statements, either to them, or in their own head of what men are like compared to women or vice versa. A person is a person is a person, right? (I also don’t buy into the idea that sharing a set of genitals with someone else means you automatically know what to do with said genitals: everyone’s genitals are different and people like them interacted with in different ways).

Plus there’s a bit near the end where Constance mentions, in passing, her child is trans. Which, y’know, cool? But she also seems to be misgendering this child throughout the narrative. The reference to GnRH and vagino plasty makes me feel that Constance has a daughter, yet this is not the term she uses, nor does she use she/her pronouns. It’s messy as all heck (and not the only passing piece of transphobia in the book, although the other example is restricted to a character we are not supposed to like).

The sections with Edmund White in them are … really hard to parse. Impossible not to admire the sheer bollocks of including yourself in a novel as the protagonist’s great, impossible love. While also showing yourself as old, vulnerable and physically grotesque. Obviously, one shouldn’t read too much into a narrative so deliberately intended blur the lines between what the world may be inclined to view as binary categories—homosexuality and heterosexuality, male and female, love and sex, past and future, fact and fiction (plus there’s My Lives if you want honesty without the veil of fiction)—but sometimes I almost felt White was indulging in a kind of authorial masochism at my expense. Like the whole book is just an impish octogenarian wank fantasy. But, hell, if it is. Fair play. I don’t mind getting Edmund White off. His writing is important to me, even when it goes to places I have no interest in or connection to.

I’m hard pressed to know how to end this review. This may be a difficult book to recommend because of *waves hands* all the things? I honestly did kind of relish it, fascinated in spite of my frequent discomfort, and in spite of not really knowing where it was going or what it was doing the half. Whatever else is going on, Edmund White (the actual writer, not his fictional counterpart) can still a story. Ruggero is a shameless narcissist and shamelessly charming; the book itself knocks him into a cocked hat on both counts. By contrast, poor Constance felt somewhat like an after-thought throughout, her sexuality increasingly feeling like a conduit for male desire than wholly belonging to her. And while she does find happiness in her choice to prioritise stability and tradition, she does also kind of end up doing the Eliza Hamilton thing of cataloguing Ruggero’s affair with Edmund White. Ruggero, by contrast, seem to finally find peace in bisexual polyamory and getting done up the arse. Which is certainly one way of finding a happy ending.

The premise of this book is highly interesting - but the writing turned me off immediately. Perhaps that is a matter of personal taste, since the other reviews of this book are very positive, but to me the prose is too much on the tell-not-show side, and the characters/dialogue implausible. I felt too much like I was reading a novel instead of being immersed.