Hmmm. This book was written in such an interesting way spatially - and it’s as if a book within a book within a book where the author becomes a character of this novel set in 2050. While I didn’t find the characters likeable, I found the writing style interesting and the idea of the story interesting. This book is out there. It’s explicit. It’s not for everyone. I don’t know if it’s for me…but here we are! Relationships and marriage and love and passion and expectations are some of the tenets of this book. - all in a way I’ve not read before. Clear as mud? It’s a lot. Too much. Thanks to Bloomsbury for the copy.

This book was not for me. It bordered on knowing or telling too much. This isn't for everyone, myself included.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I found A Previous Life scattered, disorganized, and confusing. It begins with a couple, Ruggero and Constance, agreeing to write down and share with each other their romantic/sexual histories. If I understood correctly, it was said thay prior to this agreement they did not share their pasts with each other. But as they were reading their stories to each other, it seemed both of them were already familiar with most of what the other was sharing. It was hard to keep up with which of them was telling a story until the other character would say or think something as a response. I had to reread several parts to keep track of who was telling the story.

Ruggero shows narcissistic tendencies and was a character I instantly disliked, and other characters did bring up his narcissism many times throughout the book to reinforce that. Constance seemed very meek and in Ruggero's shadow during their relationship and I felt frustrated for her. Ruggero, throughout the book, treats others as objects or trophies, and consistently points out anything about them he sees as a flaw. It became exhausting for me to read.

After the main plot where Ruggero and Constance read their stories to each other, the book got almosf impossible for me to make sense of. The author of the book, Edmund White, is featured as a character that Ruggero has a several years affair with...and somewhere down the line Constance is writing a book about Edmund and Ruggero's relationship. There are a lot of graphic sexual details that include body shaming and degradation, which I just found uncomfortable to read.

Throughout the whole book there was misogyny, ageism, and various kinds of stereotyping of groups of people. I think it was possibly included to make the reader dislike the characters saying/thinking these things, but it was over the top for me and just not entertaining or interesting to read. None of the characters felt theee dimensional. Perhaps they were meant to be seen as caricatures. The book just wasn't what I had expected based on the blurb.

Thank you to NetGalley, for this ARC. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

After reading this, I am still not fully sure what I read. I went into this really wanting to enjoy it based on the book blurb. However, the tangential nature of the writing with no chapters, headings, subheadings, etc made it difficult to follow at times. This was especially evident in the last half where the tale appeared to nosedive into a stream of consciousness, where an additional draft could have aided in flow.

The year: 2050.
A seventy something Italian musician, Ruggero Castelnuovo is nursing a broken leg from a skiing accident. While recuperating, Ruggero’s thirty year old wife Constance with persuasion, claims the time has come to confess about their pasts. Lifting the ban, the voices of Ruggero and Constance share the lives they once led.
Constance had two unsuccessful marriages to older men and a relationship with her roommate at Princeton. Ruggero had numerous affairs with men and women, his most passionate, with Edmund White, when the author was in his eighties.
The portraits of Ruggero and Constance are revelations of gender, sexuality, painful truths, affairs of the heart and of the mind laced with moments of humor. This is the path each traveled and the layers that brought them here.
Once again Edmund White has given us another dimension of the human spirit in this highly recommended read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for an ARC in exchange for an honest book review.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for the opportunity to read this ARC in return for a fair and honest review. I had never read one of Edmund White's books before. I was intrigued by the blurb, and decided to request this book, A Previous Life. The description said that it was the story of a married couple, who decided, after years together, to share details of their past sexual lives. This sounded like a take on a Scenes from A Marriage kind of story, so I started to read it, The blurb also said it explored themes of polyamory, homosexuality and bisexuality. The story takes place in 2050. I should hasted to add that the date was given as a way to discuss the covid pandemic as a historical event, there is no attempt to fortell the future, or predict how things will be different in 2050. It is just a date, as a way to give a time frame. I appreciated that. The main section of the book was the story of Ruggero and Constance- a married couple who decide to write out their sexual histories to share with each other. I found this concept fascinating, they had not shared things because they feared the stories would lead to problems in their relationship.Both had homosexual, and polyamorous relationships. The story moves from one person reading , to the other commenting, both aloud and to themselves. I found this section excellent. Then the story took a strange turn. It went from telling a story about the past, to the introduction of a new character, into the present. It also went into great detail about Ruggero's relationship with Edmond White, the writer( and yes the author).some30 years prior. This ,along with references to White's book( A Previous Life)-was way too meta for me. I also felt that it went too far from the original premise, which I enjoyed, and into a different path all together. The sex scenes, which were mostly homosexual in nature, were very graphic. I was not offended, but more bored after a while. It was an interesting premise, one that just did not pan out for me.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this book.

The premise of this book is the tale of a wife and a husband who agree to write their own highly personal and intimate memoirs for the other to read. The book is set in 2050, and they start they stories with their childhoods, Ruggero, the husband, starts in the 1980s while Constance, the wife, starts her tale in the 2010s as they have a 30 year age gap between them.

I loved this premise and thought it was both incredibly thought-provoking as well as quite romantic. However, as their stories went on, I found myself getting more and more bored. While delightful and humorous at times, it all started getting repetitive for me. Ruggero’s character was also one I didn’t particularly like, he is extremely narcissistic and the longer I read his life story, the more repelled I was by his lack of self-awareness in his own privilege. His narcissism was also felt in his position within the book in contrast to Constance’s, who almost felt like an after-thought.

Now, one of Ruggero’s lovers is a gay writer Edmund White. Yes, the author. If I’m being honest, writing yourself in your own book as a fictional character is quite weird. It blurred the lines between fact and fiction. It showed the author in a weirdly intimate light, but I can’t say it didn’t work. It was equal parts strange, intriguing, and funny.

This book is quite a unique one. It is hard to define it, as is to define my feelings about it. It’s strange in a way that is simultaneously repulsive and intriguing. While I found the second half or so of the book to drag and had some irritants when it came to our protagonists, this is definitely a book I will be thinking about for a long time. Whether I recommend it is another question I’m not sure I have an answer to, but if you’re looking for something equal parts charming and infuriating, delightful yet repulsive - this book might be for you!