A Boy's Own Story

Published in 1982, "A Boy's Own Story" is a semi-autobiographical novel by the American writer Edmund White. It is the first book of a trilogy that continued with "The Beautiful Room Is Empty" (1988) and "The Farewell Symphony" (1997), following a young gay man's experience of homosexuality in the 1950s in Cincinnati, Chicago and Michigan. Although the three novels share themes and are often considered at least partly autobiographical, they do not tell a linear story in the manner of some other trilogies.

The novel opens when the narrator, aged fifteen, experiences the physical side of young love with his twelve-year-old friend Kevin O'Brien. Although he is the younger boy, Kevin takes the lead in their sexual activity. Their encounters become infrequent and recede as the protagonist's long soul-searching about his homosexuality continues; he tries to outgrow it or to rationalize it as a passing phase. The story also recalls his childhood, his parents' divorce and his older sister's constant teasing. During a summer visit to his father, he befriends a local man who promises to take him to New York for money, then fails to appear. Later the same man takes him to a hustler, with whom he has his first sexual experience.

The book is regarded as a landmark of gay culture, comparable in importance to Christopher Isherwood's "Goodbye to Berlin" in the 1930s or Larry Kramer's "Faggots" in the 1970s. Critics have praised its blend of an adolescent's amazed gaze with a finely wrought prose style, and have noted echoes of J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" and Oscar Wilde's "De Profundis".