Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris - Tapa dura

Paris may well be White's pearl, but he is in fact the real pearl, moving around inside an aloof and unforgiving social hub. Few living writers are as able as White to evoke life as a busy, complex, deeply silly and at times moving experience. He sees everything and reveals even more. This wonderfully eccentric, conversational and personalised cultural history contains the essence of Edmund White . Entertaining and wry, White is worldly-wise and wise ... Edmund White misses very little about either himself or others (Eileen Battersby, Irish Times)

Edmund White writing about his Paris years, with walk-on parts for Catherine Deneuve, Yves Saint-Laurent and other assorted members of the French glitterati? That'd be Inside a Pearl (Scotsman)

There is at once something artfully canny and beguilingly innocent about Inside a Pearl . Each life is invaluable to its possessor; very few autobiographies come close to encapsulating that vitality. This is one such. You want to hold on to him, will him to live more, live longer and write about more years (Independent)

We are lucky to have him still publishing . diverting, affectionate as well as bitchy, and full of tips (London Evening Standard)

In the end, this dazzling memoir isn't just a love song to a city - a city "so calm" it is "like living inside a pearl" - but profoundly moving elegy to a friend (Sunday Times)

***** (Mail on Sunday)

White dazzles his readers with anecdotes about the rich and brilliant people he met in Marie-Claude's orbit and through his work for American Vogue (Observer)

Gossipy, sharp and funny (Sunday Times Must Reads)

Very readable, gossipy and name-dropping (Scotsman)

Delightful to read ... Beautifully crafted sentences ... There is nothing dowdy about Inside a Pearl; there is much kindliness, indomitable spirit, smiley self-regard, with smatterings of common sense and an abundance of what White calls "silly fun" (Literary Review)