Edmund White's lockdown novel starts from a new take on the Decameron idea: a married couple, stuck in their ski-chalet at Sils Maria because the husband has broken his leg, decide to amuse themselves by writing down and then reading aloud to each other accounts of their previous sexual relationships. Both Constance (American and 30) and Ruggero (Sicilian and 70) have previous marriages and a selection of interesting lovers of both genders behind them, but the clou is that back in 2018, when he was only forty, Ruggero had a passionate affair with a now-forgotten American writer called Edmund White, then in his late seventies. Yes, that's right, we seem to be in the 2050s, although this clearly isn't science-fiction, and the world has changed remarkably little since the 2020s.

Because Constance and Ruggero are educated people but not novelists, and because they are meant to be writing only for their mutual amusement, White has the excuse to give us a lot of carefully calculated "bad" writing, much of it shamelessly pornographic. At times, especially in Ruggero's teenage memories, he seems to be parodying his own overwrought writing from the Boy's own story era — "At the same moment we had peeled down our mutande, releasing our hard Sicilian cocks like overeager hunting dogs." (Of course, he's only using the Italian word for underpants because it gives him an excuse to make that terrible middle-class-gay-dinner-party joke about mutatis mutandis...)

There is maybe a bit of a serious point behind all the raunchiness, as White reflects on the many ways old age makes both love and sex more difficult without noticeably reducing our need for them. He makes fun of his unappetising old man's body and its weaknesses, but he wants us to understand that he's still as happy to fantasise about hard Sicilian cocks as he was when he was fourteen. And there's also an extended joke about the way it's more often than not the discarded lovers who get to define how you will be remembered after your death...

Fun, although I was getting very bored with Ruggero's arrogant voice by the end of the book. ( )

So when I read this particular section on page 1:

'With each flattering supposition, he relaxed. He sat back down. He looked at her as if verifying her degree of sophistication. At last he smiled.'

...I knew then that i was already in trouble. I respect Edmund White and his long and important career, but I simply could not engage with this book at all. Wordy, verbose - call it what you will, but the two central characters and their sexual self-obsession just left me cold. I admired White's attempt to write himself into the narrative as a character, but somehow it felt just that, a literary device for the sake of it. Nope. Better people than I seem to have liked this, so I will just move on to something else that I will enjoy. Sorry, but only 2 stars from me. ( )