Review by Booklist Review
Acclaimed travel writer and best-selling novelist Theroux (Burma Sahib, 2024) is also a master of the short story. The form is perfectly suited to Theroux's skills; the journalist's eye for detail and the novelist's sense of drama are enhanced by his gifts as a pure storyteller. In the titular tale, former naval diver Guy Petit is a handyman working for a well-known artist. His life is ruled by bad luck until he remembers a long-forgotten possession. Many of these stories explore morality, fate, and the perpetual march of time. A lonely, elderly man tells stories to three neighborhood children, with tragic consequences. Retirees Stan and Marge are renovating a home when Stan falls, hurts his back, and reflects on their life together. An ESOL teacher becomes obsessed with a student and risks losing everything. A misanthropic teacher in Africa is seduced by a young woman from the village. Felix realizes that his thoughts often become reality. Now aged and alone, his sudden infatuation with a younger woman leads to unforeseen ends. Theroux's stories recall those of de Maupassant or O. Henry, complete with a twist ending. Each bears Theroux's unmistakable adventurous curiosity and philosophical musings, such as, "when you realize the difference between the container and the content you will have knowledge."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The stories in this uneven collection from novelist and travel writer Theroux (Burma Sahib) offer fleeting glimpses into places near and far from his New England home. In such entries as "Father X," which finds a disgraced Boston priest ghostwriting sermons for busy clergymen, Theroux writes movingly of characters who are enigmas to their loved ones. More often, however, the stories only scratch the surface. In "Love Doll," for example, married new father Ray Blanton teaches English at a Honolulu night school, where he becomes infatuated with a Vietnamese student who turns out to be a sex worker. As Theroux pokes fun at a Brazilian student's dialect ("I waynt to the Honolulu museum and I seen all the feengs they are robbed from odder countries.... These people are feefs!") the story starts to feel dated. A series of linked entries follow aging writer Andy Parent, a thinly veiled Theroux, who frets about being forgotten in the contemporary literary scene. In one, "The Silent Woman," Andy employs a researcher, Ollie, for his novel about George Orwell (a reference to Burma Sahib). When Ollie confesses that he's interested in Andy's work (though he hasn't read it) because it was removed from his college curriculum over concerns about "objectifying women," Andy risibly replies that he was once drawn to Henry Miller for similar reasons. This torpid volume doesn't reach the heights of Theroux's best work. (Jan.)
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