My lives

No 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", here in his memoir White takes the fiction out of his story and delivers the facts in all their shocking and absorbing verity.

From an adolescence in the 1950s, an era which tried to 'cure' homosexuality, but found him 'unsalvageable', he emerged into a 1960s society which re-designated 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 - not to mention her 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.

White introduces us to his lovers and predilections - past and present, and on the way gives his striking and eloquent opinions on art, life and other artists. "My Lives" is a spectacular treat: by turns moving and hilarious, outrageous and enlightening.