A Boy's Own Story

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A Boy’s Own Story is a 1982 semi-autobiographical novel by Edmund White.

A Boy’s Own Story is the first of a trilogy of novels, describing a boy’s coming-of-age and documenting a young man’s experience of homosexuality in the 1950s.

The story starts when the author, aged fifteen, experiences the physical side of young love with his twelve-year-old friend Kevin. Although much the younger boy, Kevin takes the lead in the sexual activity. The two pubescent boys' mutual sodomy is described in detail with tenderness and realism. Kevin's remoteness - he doesn’t allow kissing - keeps the relationship one sided and one can imagine that the young Kevin forgets all about it once each session is over whereas the author gets more and more worried about his deep feelings. As the book progresses, the encounters between the two adolescents become infrequent and are kept in the background, yet the author’s soul-searching about his homosexuality continues.

The trilogy continued with The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1998), the latter of which brought the setting up to the 1990s. However, although all three share a number of themes and are frequently considered to be at least partly autobiographical, they do not tell a linear story in the manner of some trilogies, and can be read independently of one another.