Timoleon Vieta Come Home: A Sentimental Journey

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Rhodes's first novel derives its power from a masterful subtlety and ingenious characterization. He serves up a lonely, bitter old queen of a protagonist: a has-been composer, a British expat living in self-imposed exile with his faithful mongrel companion, Timoleon Vieta. Surviving on scant music royalties and cheap wine, Cockcroft, a tragicomic old man, is holed up in a dilapidated Italian farmhouse, pining after lost loves and opportunities, daydreaming of a dramatic suicide, and gazing into the remarkably beautiful eyes of his canine cohort. But this tranquil domestic arrangement is soon disrupted by the intrusion of a new boarder known only as "the Bosnian," who agrees to pay Cockroft's suggested rent (a particular weekly sexual favor).

The Bosnian brings out the worst in the dog and ultimately forces Cockcroft to make a painful choice between the two, ending the snarls, kicks, and bites that have overtaken his home. Following the ousted Timoleon Vieta as he makes an incredible journey toward home, readers encounter disparate Italians grappling with life and love. Rhodes renders his characters with gritty honesty, deadly beauty, and a dark existential humor at every bend in the road, reminding readers of the sacrifices we make to keep love in our lives, and the often grievous consequences. (Fall 2003 Selection)

Paul Bailey

...overall, this is an amusing and exhilarating ragbag, at its best when the heroic stray is inspiring cautionary tales. It may be too eccentric, too diffuse, for those accustomed to conventional storytelling. I have to say that I rather loved it.
—The Independent (London)

The New York Times

In the hands of another writer, such events might sound overly cute or contrived or tongue in cheek, but Mr. Rhodes manages to serve them up with an anomalous blend of humor, heartfelt emotion and old-fashioned storytelling verve. He has written a beguiling and resonant little novel. — Michiku Kakutani

The New Yorker

Carthusians Cockroft, a washed-up composer of British TV jingles, lives in a disintegrating farmhouse in Umbria, his solitude relieved only by a faithful dog, Timoleon Vieta, and a procession of exceptionally fickle boyfriends. Petty and stupid, full of drink and self-pity, Cockroft is a wonderful creation. (He indulges in ludicrously aestheticized fantasies of suicide, such as throwing himself from the top of the Colosseum and “quietly and nakedly falling at the dead of night.”) Rhodes never quite succeeds in making this character into a novel. A young hunk, obviously a nasty piece of work, shows up and forces Cockroft to abandon the dog in Rome. The second half of the book, in ironic homage to “Lassie Come-Home,” narrates the dog’s return by sketching the life stories of those he encounters. Rhodes demonstrates his ability to spin an engaging tale time and again, but to less and less effect with each iteration.

Publishers Weekly

Is Britain's latest literary darling the real thing, or does he just know how to give an intriguing interview? Rhodes's accomplished if coy debut collection of 101 short stories (Anthropology) won much praise; his second collection (Don't Tell Me the Truth About Love) made less of a splash. The author then announced he would no longer write fiction after his next release, causing quite a stir among critics. This novel-if he doesn't change his mind-may be his final shout. Cockroft, winsomely pathetic at best and highly unlikable at worst, is an aging musical theater has-been living off his scant royalties in the Italian countryside. He has just enough money to act as a sugar daddy to handsome young men, but lately his only companion is the eponymous mongrel, whose "eyes were as pretty as a little girl's." Although Cockroft proclaims his love for the loyal Timoleon Vieta and spoils him rotten, he misses the human touch. When a mysterious houseguest, dubbed the Bosnian, appears on his doorstep and clashes with the dog, Cockroft has a difficult decision to make. In the end, the Bosnian can offer what the dog can't, so the dog gets the boot. But Rhodes, ever clever, gives us two stories in one. The second stars those who cross the rejected dog's path as he traverses Italy in search of his master. Rhodes's simple, effortless prose and quick wit make him a master of the quip and the character sketch, but readers may find they develop a greater fondness for Rhodes's secondary characters than for Cockroft or the Bosnian. This is a love-it-or-hate-it novel-Rhodes's unsettling brand of black humor and the book's brutal conclusion will make some readers queasy-but either way, it will spur talk. (Aug.) Forecast: Rhodes is one of Granta's 2003 Best Young British Novelists and a new author for Canongate, publishers of Life of Pi. Though buzz in the U.S. probably won't reach U.K. heights, this could attract a cultish, campy readership. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A taste for rough trade and an inclination toward bestiality lead the parade of perverse charms that trudges through this impishly outré first novel. In an arch voice that intermittently resembles those of James Purdy and Ronald Firbank, British author Rhodes (Anthropology, stories, 2000) charts the mood swings that overpower his protagonist, a disgraced composer and former bandleader who calls himself Carthusians Cockroft, and now lives in the Italian countryside (Tuscany) in a seclusion punctuated only by a succession of live-in male lovers and by the presence of Cockroft's beloved dog Timoleon Vieta, a soulful mongrel distinguished by its "irresistible" golden eyes. (If there's any explanation of why man and beast bear these fey, cumbersome monikers, it's not forthcoming.) A semblance of a plot develops when Cockroft takes in another stray, a handsome, semiarticulate drifter known only as "the Bosnian" (who, however, "had never even been to Bosnia and wasn't sure he would be able to find it on a map"). In exchange for board and rent, the Bosnian performs assorted household repairs (and weekly oral sex), but proves to be incompatible with the equally temperamental mutt, which he persuades Cockroft to abandon on the unfamiliar streets of Rome. The remainder of the story crisscrosses among revelations of Cockroft's scandal-plagued past and of the Bosnian's true ethnicity and identity (both actually rather neat surprises) and the adventures of Timoleon Vieta on the prowl, complete with "backstories" for the several people the dog encounters during an instinctive journey homeward that eventually connects the novel with its (acknowledged) inspiration: Eric Knight's sentimental classic LassieCome Home. Rhodes's tale has its amusing moments, but it's sabotaged by inexcusable amounts of redundancy and padding, by the promiscuous deployment of characters and motifs that disappear and reappear quite arbitrarily, and by a creepy and really quite callous surprise ending. Rhodes has been acclaimed as one of England's most promising young writers. No comment.