Jack Holmes and His Friend

Edmund White has three voices. First there is the storyteller, relaxed, conversational, an anecdotalist, an inspired flaneur. Then there is the poet: on every page there lies in wait a metaphor of startling precision, an image that holds and reattracts the eye. And then there is the laic philosopher, who observes human life from the highest altitudes, held aloft by vast infusions of erudition and experience. In Jack Holmes and His Friend, White's trio is in frictionless accord * Martin Amis *
This comedy of sexual manners may be White's finest novel * Sunday Times *
Wise, funny, sympathetic and richly entertaining novel * Boyd Tonkin, Independent *
There's a sleek, close-shaved quality to White's prose that in passages gives it the warm lubicriousness of early Updike and the dry martini sting of Cheever * Financial Times *
It will make you smile with admiration * Evening Standard *
Marks White out as an immensely gifted chronicler of the intricacies of the human heart * Alex Clark, Guardian *
Lucid and powerful ... White is a novelist of great insight * Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph *
An elegant study of the paradoxes and half-truths that emerge in long-standing friendships * New Yorker *
White's talent remains undiminished * Daily Mail *