Edmund White has crossed "The Catcher in the Rye" with "De Profundis," J. D. Salinger with Oscar Wilde, to create an extraordinary novel. It is a clear and sinister pool in which goldfish and piranhas both swim.

In "A Boy's Own Story," a nameless narrator looks back at his youth with irony, affection and sorrow. What he sees is a child as alienated, self-conscious and perceptive as any protagonist in the whole catalogue of 20th-century Bildungsromane. His parents are divorced. His older sister torments him. Because his eccentric father is rich, the boy has material comforts. Because his mother is flighty, his access to both parents is erratic….

This partially deprived child of privilege flees into books and fantasy, which, because they have the order and logic of art, can console him for disorder of life. In them he is majestic, powerful and saved.

A romantic, the boy...