The Beautiful Room Is Empty cover art

The Beautiful Room Is Empty

A Novel

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The Beautiful Room Is Empty

By: Edmund White
Narrated by: George Backman
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About this listen

When the narrator of White's poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is "a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday." That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men. Moving from a Midwestern college to the Stonewall Tavern on the night of the first gay uprising - and populated by eloquent queens, butch poseurs, and a fearfully incompetent shrink - The Beautiful Room is Empty conflates the acts of coming out and coming of age.

©1988 Edmund White (P)2014 Audible Inc. Coming of Age Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction

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All stars
Most relevant
I have no idea whether because this story was written in 1988 or the narrator rather dismal , monisalapoc tones but I struggle with this story , completely boring , soulless and literally empty . obviously Edmund White had the total command of American and English language ,but however , his rather meticulous and beautiful ,hugely talented depth of discription is rather boring . The sex scenes are endless but sadly NOT disappointingly highly distcriptive , and boringly repetitive . However it is clearly well written but I do believe a more lively narrator would have made this story more palletable and less sending the reader to sleep 💤

the beautiful empty book

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