Book Review: Forgetting Elena by Edmund White

The nervous, unnamed narrator finds himself trying to wade through the minefield of manners and social proprieties of his life in a seaside community reminiscent of Fire Island. He spends his days attending parties with Herbert as his entourage, keeping watch to make sure he says the right things, constructing carefully worded poems to describe the events of the day, and constantly searching from some sign from Herbert that he made the right decision. Just when he believes that he's managed to make it into the island society's good graces, along comes a woman named Elena who manages to throw the narrator into doubt who he really is and his position in this new society.

Forgetting Elena never seemed to connect with me, and many times I fought against the urge to set the novel aside. While White's prose is beautiful, the way he describes the different guests at one of the high dances of the island, for example, the story didn't gel. I didn't like the narrator, who seemed very weak and uncertain, and never grew beyond that. For a while, I thought he had been drugged, and I was seeing the world through tarnished and hazy eyes. Then, after realizing he hadn't used any drugs, I thought he was simple minded. In the end, I think he was just as confused as I was about the whole story. Perhaps this lack of connecting to him tarnished my impression of the book. But the island society -- I'm calling it that because that's the impression I had -- rubbed me the wrong way, as well. The way characters acted, the lack of any explanation for their mannerisms and their sense of entitlement (or superiority), their odd sense of propriety -- I tried to understand, to connect their actions with what the narrator was feeling or describing, but felt myself really not caring on whit about them.

Not one of my favorite Edmund White books, and I would have a difficult time recommending it. Instead, try Hotel de Dream or The Married Man or The Beautiful Room Is Empty.

Forgetting Elena
by Edmund White
Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0-345-35862-7
paperback, 183 pgs.

purchased book on own