the sex in edmund white's novels is always well written--he writes about bodies in the midst of sexaulotiy, and the melolncholy of erotic loss better than most--and his new one, about the love of a gay man for his straight best friend over 40 years, talks about sex better than most...

but it is also about bodies--about nipples of both men and women, of how chins move when laying in bed, of assholes, and vulvas, of the small of the back, of a perfect calf, of cocks; even a cock with the drip of the clap, resembling drowned women in japanese prints and films--so all of the sexualised bodies, straight and gay and queer and everything, it is about in a lot of ways, how the devolpement of a core sexual identity post war, and aids lead to the closing of an identity, and it is about the failure of bodies...he is also perhaps the great american poet of masturabation

but not only the failure of sexualised bodies, there is a scene where the straight charachter's (will white) son has asthma, and the depiction of the child almost dying, or about perfect details of matrons that the gay charachters eventually escorts thru upper echelon society.

and the obsession with materality, does not limit himself to bodies--he talks about furniture, about the potential of a certain kind of wasp splendour when the gay character (jack chambers) talks about pink riding coats and worn out rugs--and this detail, of the domestic--of furniture, of the dishes one eats 3 am dinners on, and the plates at the plaza hotel, and the back rooms of bars, and all of this social mobility--that the materality of it all becomes one thing.

it hints at other things--of the problems of pining, of the nature of desire, of always wanting and never getting, of the consquences of the libertine, about class in america, about europeans and about clothes--the depicitons of clothes are some of the best writing in white's career (and white always writes about costumes well); and there are some useful critics (it's too local, too much about new york, it still thinks of the suburbs as exotic, it has problems with race, the depictions of women are problematic in places) but as a tone study its beautiful.