The Collected Stories

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Best known for his novels and travel writing, Theroux ("My Other Life"; "The Pillars of Hercules") has also been a prolific writer of short fiction throughout his career. Like his longer works, his stories unfold in settings ranging from England to Africa and explore the same themes of separation and the search for love and belonging. Of the 60-odd tales collected here, the earliest ones such as "World's End," about a married man whose suspicion of his wife's infidelity turns their young son into a pawn in the couple's battlehave a curiously 19th-century feel. With their ironic plot twists and old-fashioned structure, they bring to mind the work of O. Henry and de Maupassant. Those written later take on a more playful postmodern tone. "Sinning with Annie," set in India, is narrated by a penitent octogenarian who was sexually innocent when he was married at 13 to his 11-year-old bride. The frisson comes as he gradually reveals his perverted concept of conjugal relations. Several of these short fictions are satires of the literary life. Some of these, such as the charming "Algebra" and "Biographical Notes for Four American Poets," are affectionate; others, including "The Exile" and "The Honorary Siberian" (both of which involve Walter Van Bellamy, a fictional American poet living in London, who appears in a handful of stories here), are considerably darker. The bulk of the stories center around an American counsel, Spencer Savage, and his picaresque adventures in love and diplomacy, beginning in Malaysia and ending in London. It is in these later stories that Theroux's skill at characterization and evoking emotional life can be seen in full flower, alongside his distinctive gift for capturing the misunderstandings that take place when differing cultures meet.

Library Journal

As one might expect from the cosmopolitan and prolific Theroux ("Kowloon Tong", LJ 3/1/97) the 60-some short stories here take place all over the globe, from Boston to Moscow, north to south, and take in all classes of characters and protagonists. Also, as one would expect from one of the very best travel writers, sense of place is evoked beautifully. A sense of "other-ness" pervades many stories, an attempt by characters to find and define themselves in alien situations. But truly, the range is colossal: some stories are wry, ironic, and distanced, some dead-on with reality, a few academic stories stand up very well, and Theroux's wit and elegant style shine throughout. This book, in fact, defies short-format review, but, fortunately, needs only notice. Highly recommended. Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Theroux is one of this country's best short-story writers.

Newsday

A devastatingly fine collection.

Kirkus Reviews

The prolific Theroux ("My Other Life", 1996, etc.) has published four volumes of short stories. This omnibus gathers all but two of the tales from "Sinning with Annie" (1972), "The Consul's File" (1977), "World's End" (1980), and "The London Embassy" (1983), and adds several previously uncollected stories. The collection forcefully demonstrates that Theroux, although he has written some unsettling and provocative novels, is often at his best as a writer of short fiction: His fascination with the ways in which a gesture or simple event can reveal the essentials of character, his shrewd eye for the rich resonance of seemingly modest events (especially when mutually uncomprehending Westerners and Africans and Asians collide), and his obvious pleasure in the constraints of a short story, the necessity for an economical use of language and incident, are all powerfully on display here. Tales like "Clapham Junction," "Sinning with Annie," "Conspirators," and "The Exile," among many others, are strong, unsettling, and unique. A varied, powerful, often moving collection, then, by one of our most original and ambitious authors.