{"product_id":"books-my-lives-by-edmund-white","title":"My Lives","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"This is Edmund White's best book by far, and a classic of emotional intelligence and generosity. . . . My Lives subsumes and concentrates all his other work.\"--Daily Telegraph (London)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNo one has been more frank, lucid, rueful and entertaining about growing up gay in Middle America than Edmund White. Best known for his autobiographical novels, starting with A Boy's Own Story, White here takes fiction out of his story and delivers the facts of his life in all their shocking and absorbing verity.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFrom an adolescence in the 1950s, an era that tried to \"cure his homosexuality\" but found him \"unsalvageable,\" he emerged into a 1960s society that redesignated his orientation as \"acceptable (nearly).\" He describes a life touched by psychotherapy in every decade, starting with his flamboyant and demanding therapist mother, who considered him her own personal test case -- and personal escort to cocktail lounges after her divorce. His father thought that even wearing a wristwatch was effeminate, though custodial visits to Dad in Cincinnati inadvertently initiated White into the culture of \"hustlers and johns\" that changed his life.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn My Lives, White shares his enthusiasms and his passions -- for Paris, for London, for Jean Genet -- and introduces us to his lovers and predilections, past and present. \"Now that I'm sixty-five,\" writes White, \"I think this is a good moment to write a memoir. . . . Sixty-five is the right time for casting a backward glance, while one is still fully engaged in one's life.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"World of Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53670291669265,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780060937966.jpg?v=1781510971","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/books-my-lives-by-edmund-white","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}