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The Beautiful Room Is Empty
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Originally published in 1982 as the first of Edmund White's trilogy of autobiographical novels, A Boy's Own Story became an instant classic for its pioneering portrayal of homosexuality. The audiobook's unnamed narrator, growing up during the 1950s, is beset by aloof parents, a cruel sister, and relentless mocking from his peers, compelling him to seek out works of art and literature as solace-and to uncover new relationships in the struggle to embrace his own sexuality.
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Good Book, Poor Performance
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In the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult.
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The Married Man
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The Swimming Pool Library
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This novel centres on the friendship of William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, who is searching for someone to write his biography.
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Gay lit. of the highest order
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The Folding Star
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Edward Manners - 33 and disaffected - escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with 17-year-old Luc and is introduced to the twilight world of the 1890s Belgian painter Edgard Orst.
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Another Hollinghurst triumph
- By Allan Robb-McLeod on 11-07-18
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A Boy's Own Story
- A Novel
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published in 1982 as the first of Edmund White's trilogy of autobiographical novels, A Boy's Own Story became an instant classic for its pioneering portrayal of homosexuality. The audiobook's unnamed narrator, growing up during the 1950s, is beset by aloof parents, a cruel sister, and relentless mocking from his peers, compelling him to seek out works of art and literature as solace-and to uncover new relationships in the struggle to embrace his own sexuality.
-
-
Good Book, Poor Performance
- By Tom on 04-04-17
-
City Boy
- My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult.
-
The Farewell Symphony
- A Novel
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Named for the work by Haydn in which the instrumentalists leave the stage one after another until only a single violin remains playing, this is the story of a man who has outlived most of his friends. Having reached the six-month anniversary of his lover's death, he embarks on a journey of remembrance that will recount his struggle to become a writer and his discovery of what it means to be a gay man.
-
The Married Man
- A Novel
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: Ken Kliban
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Austin Smith is pushing fifty, loveless and drifting, until one day he meets Julien, a much younger, married Frenchman. In the beginning, the lovers' only impediments are the comic clashes of culture, age, and temperament. Before long, however, the past begins to catch up with them. In a desperate quest to save health and happiness, they move from Venice to Key West, from Montreal in the snow to Providence in the rain. But it is amid the bleak, baking sands of the Sahara that their love is pushed to its ultimate crisis.
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The Swimming Pool Library
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This novel centres on the friendship of William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, who is searching for someone to write his biography.
-
-
Gay lit. of the highest order
- By common reader on 14-01-09
-
The Folding Star
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edward Manners - 33 and disaffected - escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with 17-year-old Luc and is introduced to the twilight world of the 1890s Belgian painter Edgard Orst.
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Another Hollinghurst triumph
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The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue
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Henry "Monty" Montague doesn't care that his roguish passions are far from suitable for the gentleman he was born to be. But as Monty embarks on his grand tour of Europe, his quests for pleasure and vice are in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family's estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy.
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Hilarious, heartbreaking, honest & beautiful
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Maurice
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'Ah for darkness...not the darkness of a house which coops up a man among furniture, but the darkness where he can be free!' Maurice Hall knows he must choose between living life in the shadows or denying himself a chance at love and fulfilment. Aware of his attraction to the same sex, in a time where it was considered unlawful and immoral to have homosexual desires, Maurice must decide whether to battle or submit to a prejudiced 20th-century English society.
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Good classic by EM Forster
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The Spell
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The Spell is a comedy of sexual manners that follows the interlocking affairs of four men: Robin, an architect in his late 40s who is trying to build an idyllic life in Dorset with his younger lover, Justin; Robin's 22-year-old son, Danny, a volatile beauty who lives for clubbing and casual sex; and the shy Alex, who is Justin's ex-boyfriend.
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A idyll c look on gay life
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The Line of Beauty
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In the summer of 1983, 23-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP, his wife, Rachel, and their children, Toby and Catherine. Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens' world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty.
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excellent writing and urgent listening
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Tales of the City
- Tales of the City, Book 1
- By: Armistead Maupin
- Narrated by: Frances McDormand
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than three decades Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture...from a groundbreaking newspaper serial, to a classic novel, to a television event that entranced millions around the world. The first of six novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales of the City is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed forever the way we live.
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Couldn't stop listening!
- By E J STICKLAND on 27-02-16
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The Sparsholt Affair
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- Narrated by: David Dawson
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
In October 1940, the handsome young David Sparsholt arrives in Oxford. A keen athlete and oarsman, he at first seems unaware of the effect he has on others - particularly on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist and destined to become a writer himself. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove: an ephemeral, uncertain place in which nightly blackouts conceal secret liaisons....
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Good - not extraordinary
- By Tamas Lorincz on 05-03-18
Summary
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.
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- Christopher
- 19-02-16
Awful Narration
Would you try another book from Edmund White and/or George Backman?
Yes for Edmund White ... No for George Backman
Do you think The Beautiful Room Is Empty needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
Yes it needs a follow up, but I know what it will focus on. That will be AIDS unfortunately, for that was the gay communities plague in the US.
Any additional comments?
I had to end up playing this on 1.25 speed just to get to the end. The narrator is so slow and over the top it's extremely annoying.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
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- Andrei
- 01-07-19
Well written
Why a Christian would read a novel like this? I am sure that most of my co-religionists would be greatly confused and may be even disappointed in me (:. Plus take into account White's somewhat hostile attitude towards Christianity. To begin with...language. White's mastery of language is totally superb. Read it just for that. Honesty- this is a very honest book. This is what I am, White tells us- deal with it. May be occasionally too much of it but still kudos to White for doing so (I would not be able to write a book like this; sometimes however I wish- and if I were what would exactly happen to me? would I be disowned?). Compassionate treatment of people of different sexual orientation (I feel like I am on shaky ground right now- forgive me if I offend anyone). When I read the novel I was within a different world of different existence (different from mine, I mean). White, like Nabokov and Tolstoy (two of his favorites), knows how to write about complex matters with a light, exhilarating and humorous tone. He also manages to convey that being gay is a painful experience in the society that does not accept homosexuality. To his credit he is not in any way didactic about it. White has been called the voice of gay America. Is it the voice only for the gays? I doubt. All of us need to hear this voice. I enjoyed very much Backman's reading (contrary to some). It has a touch of neuroticism and urgency about it. He sings through the novel. Strongly recommended on all counts.
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- escoocoo
- 09-03-18
ENJOYED IT!!
Very good book by a fine author. I didn’t realize that this is the second book in a trilogy, but I don’t think it matters what order they are read/listened to as I had no trouble following the story. I do plan on listening to the other books in the trilogy as well as a worthwhile endeavor. I think I recall a number of people “dissing” the narrator, but I thought the narrator was great(!!), and a good part of what made listening to this book so enjoyable.
I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about the authentic gay male experience during the years prior to the explosion of the gay rights movement by someone who knows (the author, not me!) because he was there and actually went through it.
There are quite a few very graphic sexual scenes in this book. However, this was not the main thrust (so to speak!) of the book and, I thought, very much in context with the rest of the telling of the story.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about this topic by an intelligent and talented writer.