Traveling to various locations in Europe and the United States, the couple make life-altering decisions about their relationship as their memoirs address large questions about aging, death, and desire. For Ruggero, this foundational trauma explains her attraction to significantly older men, including one who robbed her of everything she had and another who humiliated her deeply. When she is continuously molested by an uncle figure, she becomes determined to pursue an education at an elite university and never return. Constance, on the other hand, details her parents’ tragic deaths and her subsequent upbringing by her nanny’s family. Along with these reminiscences spill Ruggero’s anxieties about his reputation, which has been compromised by a dramatic and well-publicized affair with the writer Edmund White. Ruggero shares memories of his aristocratic upbringing, his early sexual experiences, and the beginnings of his music career. When the couple determines that silence is no longer serving them, they begin to write a series of “confessions” in the form of episodic memoirs, which they take turns reading aloud. Ruggero has already had a slew of marriages and love affairs with men and women alike, while Constance has had two brief marriages. White’s latest begins in the year 2050, when Sicilian musician Ruggero Castelnuovo and his American wife, Constance, decide to break a vow they had made to keep their pasts in the dark.

A septuagenarian musician and his 30-year-old wife break their silence about the past and share a series of episodic confessions.

A Previous Life by Edmund White