A Previous Life

Starred review from October 18, 2021
White (A Saint from Texas) offers an erotically charged and ingenious metafictional story of a married couple. In 2050, 70-something Sicilian musician Ruggero Castelnuovo agrees, with his 30-year-old American wife, Constance, to break the silence about their pasts. Three decades earlier, Ruggero had an affair with Edmund White, who was in his 80s at the time. Ruggero and Constance read their memoirs aloud in alternate passages, and each welcomes their newfound revelations. Ruggero fears that despite his international reputation in the music world he’ll only be remembered as “the man who ruined Edmund White’s life” (what he means by that will come out later). Constance tells of a gay suitemate at Princeton, two failed marriages to older men (robbed by her first husband; humiliated by her second). As their confessions unroll, they reckon with the shadow of age and redefine their relationship, culminating in life-changing decisions. Through it all, the author hands his characters indelible lines to express their self-knowledge, which often yield insights on gender fluidity and sexuality (“it was the part you played that determined your identity, not the gender of your partner,” Ruggero tells Constance, explaining an episode of role play). It adds up to a dizzyingly enticing and kaleidoscopic take on the spectrum of sexual experiences.

December 1, 2021
White, a prolific writer of both nonfiction and fiction, follows his historical novel, A Saint from Texas (2020), with a sometimes humorous and nearly always irreverent tale about love and aging that is experimental in execution if not quite in theme. It begins in 2050 and looks back and is tinged from start to finish with regret and a sense of longing, signaled by White's use of the sentimental Scots ballad about separation, "Loch Lomond," as one of two epigraphs. The story revolves around a Sicilian aristocrat, Ruggero, who is also a professional musician (he plays the harpsichord), and his younger American wife, Constance. Each write their respective memoirs in alternating chapters. Many of their memories feature numerous marriages and even more numerous affairs, including trysts for each with both men and women. Given that this is an Edmund White novel--his work can often be unpredictable and striking--fiction and real life sometimes overlap, especially when one of Ruggero's affairs is with White himself. The result is an erotically charged literary romp facing the loss of physical beauty and the inevitable passage of time.

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February 1, 2022
A septuagenarian musician and his 30-year-old wife break their silence about the past and share a series of episodic confessions. White's latest begins in the year 2050, when Sicilian musician Ruggero Castelnuovo and his American wife, Constance, decide to break a vow they had made to keep their pasts in the dark. Ruggero has already had a slew of marriages and love affairs with men and women alike, while Constance has had two brief marriages. When the couple determines that silence is no longer serving them, they begin to write a series of "confessions" in the form of episodic memoirs, which they take turns reading aloud. Ruggero shares memories of his aristocratic upbringing, his early sexual experiences, and the beginnings of his music career. Along with these reminiscences spill Ruggero's anxieties about his reputation, which has been compromised by a dramatic and well-publicized affair with the writer Edmund White. Constance, on the other hand, details her parents' tragic deaths and her subsequent upbringing by her nanny's family. When she is continuously molested by an uncle figure, she becomes determined to pursue an education at an elite university and never return. For Ruggero, this foundational trauma explains her attraction to significantly older men, including one who robbed her of everything she had and another who humiliated her deeply. Traveling to various locations in Europe and the United States, the couple make life-altering decisions about their relationship as their memoirs address large questions about aging, death, and desire. In crisp but erotically charged prose, White provides a compelling character study that presses on the boundaries of sexuality and romance, polyamory and marriage. The memoirs give the book a unique and immersive structure as the secrets Ruggero and Constance reveal cast light on enigmatic parts of their internal lives and as they negotiate the terms of their marriage. A delightful metafictional novel that examines conventions of marriage and love.

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January 1, 2022

Sicilian aristocrat/musician Ruggero and his younger American wife, Constance, have long refused to discuss their earlier life experiences, honesty having wrecked their previous marriages. Now, however, they are writing their Confessions, with Constance revealing multiple marriages to older men and Ruggero chronicling a lifetime's worth of affairs with women and men, including an author named Edmund White. From the winner of the 2019 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation; with a 45,000-copy first printing.

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