A Boy's Own Story is an autobiographical novel by Edmund White that was published in 1982. The work quickly became iconic for its compassionate, frank, and revelatory treatment of the challenges gay youth faced while growing up during the oppressive 1950s and 1960s until the Stonewall Revolution of 1969. The graphic novel is an adaptation of the original work by writers Brian Alessandro and Michael Carroll, who also incorporate elements of White's life, culled from his many memoirs, and which advances the story into adulthood from Ohio in the 1950s to New York and Paris in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The illustration work consists of a book concept design, cover art, and 260 pages filled with painted frames visually actualizing Alessandro and Carroll's cinematic script. The book required a rigorous effort in capturing the aesthetic and atmosphere of the American Midwest of the 1950s, New York of the 1960s and 1970s, and Paris of late 1980s. The art is intended to give the text all the theatricality and sophistication that made White's 1982 novel so memorable.

From book reviews:

In this gorgeous graphic adaptation, much of Edmund White’s sublimely wrought prose is absent by necessity. But the exquisite, dreamlike illustrations by Igor Karash have their own distinctive power to immerse us in the young narrator’s loneliness and relentless self-consciousness—quite a feat in a format that relies on showing rather than telling. This is a vivid and sensuous new take on White’s coming-of-age classic.

Alison Bechdel | Author of Fun Home and The Secret to Superhuman Strength.

A stunning and most welcome work of pictorial art that is as bold and as honest as its enduring classic prose version. Both are now here to stay.

 André Aciman | Author of Call Me By Your Name.

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