THE BEAUTIFUL ROOM IS EMPTY

by Edmund White ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 29, 1988

Sequel to White's autobiographical childhood novel A Boy's Own Story (1982) that carries the nameless narrator from sexual awakening through college and young manhood in Chicago to gay paradise in Greenwich Village. The cloying style that drained A Boy's Own Story and made a glutinous mess of Caracole (1985) is kept under control here. With everything seen in less voluptuous lighting, the new novel reveals itself as a plotless paste-up--with clearly heartfelt but far-from-intriguing description standing in for incident. But just when you think nothing is going to happen, the last quarter of the book achieves an inspired breakthrough. Before then, the narrator's family appears vaguely and threateningly, with Dad going purple with anger about his son's queerness, and with Mom hustling him off to a shrink. The shrink turns out to be sicker than his patients. Meanwhile, the narrator tries to make sexual contact with Maria, a sculptress, who becomes his live-in lesbian buddy--a tie that lacks drama and never achieves the taste of honey it seeks. For a decade the narrator resists his homosexuality while giving in to the most degrading (and lively) cruising and to his compulsion to give quick sex in the college toilets--a compulsion that finally bursts into dramatic fireworks when the narrator lets it carry him to the sexual world of filthy, reeking New York subway toilets during rush hour. From this point on, until Judy Garland's death on the evening of the Stonewall tavern riot, two or three struggling gays take on some weight and breadth but remain minor notes in the saga. So, praise for restraint, especially for the less lyrical style--but, all in all, these scraps are nothing new.

Pub Date: March 29, 1988

ISBN: 0679755403

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION