Edmund White

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Jack Holmes and His Friend

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book | Fiction | 2012
US & Canada → Bloomsbury Publishing (Ed. Anton Mueller)
UK & Canada → Bloomsbury Publishing (Ed. Michael Fishwick)
The tantalizing story of a decades-long friendship between two men that charts the sexual revolution from both gay and straight perspectives.

Jack Holmes and Will Wright arrive in New York in the calm before the storm of the 1960s. Coworkers at a cultural journal, they soon become good friends. Jack even introduces Will to the woman he will marry. But their friendship is complicated: Jack is also in love with Will. Troubled by his subversive longings, Jack sees a psychiatrist and dates a few women, while also pursuing short-lived liaisons with other men. But in the two decades of their friendship, from the first stirrings of gay liberation through the catastrophe of AIDS, Jack remains devoted to Will. And as Will embraces his heterosexual sensuality, nearly destroying his marriage, the two men share a newfound libertinism in a city that is itself embracing its freedom.

Moving among beautifully delineated characters in a variety of social milieus, Edmund White brings narrative daring and an exquisite sense of life’s submerged drama to this masterful exploration of friendship, sexuality, and sensibility during a watershed moment in history.
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The audio rights are handled by Liz Farrell.

Helen Manders manages the translation rights for Jack Holmes and His Friend

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French
World
Editions Plon
German
World
Bruno Gmunder Verlag
Italian
World
Playground Edizioni
Media
Jack Holmes and His Friend
Reviews

Often comic, never heartless.
The Independent

It will make you smile with admiration.
The Evening Standard

Poetic and beautifully written. Kelly Apter

This new novel achieves a greater clarity and a deeper empathy, and for these grown up virtues it should be justly celebrated.
The Telegraph

Engaging and erotic.
The Observer

An elegantly stylish novel that deals grippingly with that subject we never tire of.
The Financial Times

One of America’s greatest living writers.
Herald (Glasgow)

White narrates an exquisitely sensual tale of love, lust and friendship.
Attitude Magazine

A masterpiece.
Scotsman

Lithe, witty, penetrating.
The Times

An impressive and thoroughly enjoyable novel. Alex Clark
The Guardian Full Review

White’s writing is beautiful, and he has a superb intimacy with his utterly convincing characters.
Saga Magazine

A thoughtful, funny, tough and slightly melancholy exploration of the conflicting attractions of excitement and stability, and the pleasures and costs of hedonism.
The Daily Mail

Radiates a melancholic charm.
The Irish Times

A treat. Boyd Tonkin
The Independent Full Review

Brilliant, moving and hilarious book. Gary Shteyngart
Full Review

An incredibly moving novel. Sam Lipsyte
Full Review

Edmund White is one of the three or four most virtuosic living writers of sentences in the English language. Dave Eggers

A wonderfully crafted story.
Windy City Times Full Review

Jack Holmes and His Friend is a comedy of manners, which ingeniously uses the system of doubling the gay hero by offering him an alter ego who is straight.
The New York Review of Books Full Review

The novel maintains an artful balance between social history and individual tale. Changes in sexual mores, sexual politics and social prejudices serve as a narrative backdrop that's only half-registered while Jack's and Will's personal and professional concerns take center stage, White being well aware that people are often more absorbed in their own dramas than the times they inhabit….As always, White's descriptions jump out at you.”
Seattle Times

Though the novel ends, it doesn't do so neatly, with the loose ends tied up. What remains is that delicious frustration that, like Jack and Will's struggles, make you want to go back to the beginning and watch it play out again.
Minneapolis Star Tribune Full Review

Friendship between gay and straight in 'Jack Holmes'
 The novel maintains an artful balance between social history and individual tale. Changes in sexual mores, sexual politics and social prejudices serve as a narrative backdrop that's only half-registered while Jack's and Will's personal and professional concerns take center stage, White being well aware that people are often more absorbed in their own dramas than the times they inhabit.
 Michael Upchurch
The Seattle Times Full Review

In chapter after chapter, White proves himself to be one of the finest practitioners of angst-ridden scene making about people in love with desire and desirous for real love.
NPR News: All Things Considered Full Review

One of the best novelists at work today, White spins an entangling—and thoroughly entertaining—yarn.
Kirkus Reviews Full Review

A well-drawn story that also serves as an important reconstruction of a time and situation important in the evolution of gay social acceptance.
Booklist Full Review

The Way We Were: In His 10th Novel, Edmund White Again Draws on Personal Experience
 Poignant. Hannah Gersen
The New York Observer Full Review

Edmund White who wrote The Beautiful Room Is Empty. Edmund White who gave us A Boy’s Own Story as well. It is as if he owes it to us to always excel. And we owe it to him to always read, nod, and approve. And this reader does, he nods and approves. The New York Journal of Books
Vinton Rafe McCabe Full Review

Once again White cements his place in the literary world. Amos Lassen
Windy City Times Full Review

Edmund White’s Body Language
 White delivers something rare. Kate Christensen
The New Times Book Review Full Review

In tender prose, White does justice to the erotic potential of the story, with abundant and charged descriptions of sex…an elegant study of the paradoxes and half-truths that emerge in long-standing friendships.
The New Yorker Full Review

Read <em>Jack Holmes &amp; His Friend</em> Now
 Read Jack Holmes & His Friend now. Daily Candy
Full Review

Arguably [White’s] greatest [novel] yet.
Gay San Diego Full Review

[White’s] prose is always most alive when it sneaks underneath the sheets. In Jack Holmes & His Friend, White is in top form.
Entertainment Weekly Full Review

Bold and moving, a reflection on masculinity, sexuality and the corrosive effect of unrequited love.
Word Magazine

An intimate and moving study of unrequited love... his best novel yet.
Sunday Times Ireland

This comedy of sexual manners may be White’s finest novel.
The Sunday Times

Representation
Books
Amanda Urban
+1 212 556 5600
Email Amanda Urban
Translation Rights
Helen Manders
+44 (0)20 7393 4425
Email Helen Manders