This starts out much better than it ends up. Jack Holmes' gay awakening in the sixties is literature mixed with pornography at its finest, complete with ridiculous misapprehensions such as the suggestion that the protagonist was doomed to homosexuality because of his abnormally large penis. It's when we meet Jack Holmes' friend that the novel begins to fall apart, because we eventually shift to Will Wright's perspective full time.

When Will Wright isn't designed Sim games, he's judging gay people as pathetic while failing to acknowledge the failures of his own existence. For almost half of the book we're treated to the dull whine of a man who's unhappy in his marriage, unhappy with his mistress, and unhappy with the only friend he's ever likely to have. Had the book been about Jack the entire time, and had we only known about Will secondhand, this book could have been consistently interesting; why we had to cede the story from the interesting homosexual to the dull pseudo-progressive homophobe-in-denial is a mystery.

Jack Holmes and His Friend becomes a tiresome drone as it progresses, until it finally terminates in two segments of confused and mish-mashed timelines. It would be interesting to know if anyone had ever advanced the theory that homosexual fiction is best read by a heterosexual audience, because here White paints a portrait of homosexuals that few would ever agree with. Everything is presented as fact, as the way "these people" are. But beyond the initial spark of recognition, this reads as a sad descent away from excitement and into an unworthy grave of prejudice.