The Loves of My Life

A Sex Memoir

By: Edmund White

Narrated by: Joel Froomkin

Bloomsbury presents The Loves of My Life by the legendary author Edmund White, a stunning, revelatory memoir of a lifetime of gay love and sex. Read by Joel Froomkin.

A VULTURE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“In his panoply of sexual encounters, Edmund White’s love of sex makes us proud to be human. And the story of his sex life reads like a beautifully crafted, very moving (and very funny!) novel.” —John Irving

"A raw, frightening, funny, and beautiful testimony, brimming with transgressive wisdom." —Robert Jones, Jr.

I’m at an age when writers are supposed to say finally what mattered most to them—for me it would be thousands of sex partners.
The 85-year-old “paterfamilias of queer literature” (New York Times) recounts the sixty-plus years of sexual escapades that have inspired his many masterpieces. He explores the sex he had with other closeted boys of the 50s Midwest, with women as a young man trying to be straight, the sex he’s paid for and been paid for, sex during the Stonewall and HIV eras, and in the age of the apps. Through tales of transactional sex, mutual admiration, open relationships, domination, submission, love, and loss, he paints an indelible portrait of queer history in America and abroad in a way only someone who has lived through it can.

Written with White’s signature honesty, irreverence, and wit, The Loves of My Life is the culmination of a legend's life and work, a delightful and moving tour of over seventy years of being unabashedly gay and in love with love in all its forms.©2025 Edmund White (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Critic reviews

Some people celebrate turning 85 with grandchildren, gardening or a nice cake. White has published a gaspingly graphic, jaunty and tender sex memoir: a guided tour of gay desire in which libido is the wellspring of just about everything.

White once estimated he’d had three thousand partners . . . and his prose here, as ever, is so redoubtably stylish that I almost wish he’d enshrined every last tryst in print . . . Line for line, I can’t recall the last time I enjoyed reading anything so much.

Gaspingly graphic, jaunty and tender…It’s far from a solemn capstone to White’s long and distinguished career. More like a mischievous rock-skipping in the moonshadow….excavatory and excellent…In the current political climate, twisting back toward repression, The Loves of My Life, slim as it is, lands louder and prouder than it otherwise might have.

The novelist Edmund White lived through the furtive 1950s, when being gay was a crime; the brief, exuberant post-Stonewall years; and the decade when AIDS tore through his community of friends and lovers. But this outline is far more serious than White’s joking and explicit memoir, in which pleasure is always the goal…It’s all sexy, funny, and romantic, too.

Blunt, raunchy, explicit, nostalgic, and unapologetically sex-forward, this memoir will excite, enchant, delight, and, perhaps most of all, make the reader truly appreciate everything that is Edmund White.

As juicy, ebullient, and ecstatic as [White’s] best novels.

With his trademark irreverence, White celebrates more than six decades of sex in a candid memoir that doubles as an indispensable work of queer history . . . Delightfully raunchy and affecting, this steamy account is full of pleasures.

In crisply written episodes laced with a wry sense of humor about his own shortcomings and social foibles, White remains a talented, carnally flagrant raconteur whose memoir thumps with the palpably racing heartbeat of life, sex, love, and unbridled desire. An irreverent and unapologetically provocative scrapbook of an aging author’s sex life.

I don’t know anyone, except Edmund White, who’s had ‘thousands of sex partners.’ I definitely don’t know anyone who writes so ebulliently about former lovers. In his panoply of sexual encounters, Edmund White’s love of sex makes us proud to be human. And the story of his sex life reads like a beautifully crafted, very moving (and very funny!) novel.

Ecstatic, so funny, tender, very hot — a scintillating romp with a literary lion. Daddy's diary fully delivers, pungent and real, teeming with gasp-worthy disclosures, as illuminating as it is filthy.

A great ode from Edmund

This is a great personal tell all kind of book. If you like White's novels, this will be enjoyable to you. Not hiding behind any characters, Edmund brings us into his honest and true world that is what influences his writing. Raw, direct, sexy, funny. AND the reader was just fantastic.

Entertaining Sexploits

Random and Randy stories of lust, desire and a unique gay life. Some of these stories may be exaggerated, and others embellished, but it’s a ton of fun.

hmmmm ok, saucy not substantial

I liked it, but I like work by the author. Edmund White is not for everyone, Parts are very spicy and a bit graphic. I like the feel of old New York City

Outstanding narration

There is no one better than Edmund White to write about gay debauchery with such marvelous eloquence. Goodness---who knew c$&ks and holes could sound like fancy dinner table conversation. Narration by Joel Froomkin was absolutely outstanding. He nailed how I would expect Edmund White to sound. Enjoyable tales here cementing some important gay history---good read (not for your mother though).

Naughty

It was a fun romp from Mr Whites teensn to his 80's. I highly recommend this book