Rating: 
Summary: When the student becomes the teacher....
Review: At the heart of the four stories in this exceptional collection is the exploration of power relationships in which the master becomes the slave, sometimes by choice, sometimes by manipulation or deceit, and sometimes as a matter of circumstance. Theroux is intrigued by what happens when a rich, aristocratic woman allows herself to be sexually dominated by a young, poor recent college graduate, or when a white South African writer, consumed by passion for a poor black woman, finds himself losing everything he has as a result of his pursuing her. In two other stories, he skillfully examines a group of young boys as they seek revenge against their priest, and a retired lawyer who finds himself at the mercy of his hired help after he follows them on their Las Vegas vacation. Each story is a classic case of role reversal. In each, the typical lines of authority are turned upside down, resulting in some fascinating discoveries about the essence of relationships and human character.
The first and title story is by far the best; both the story and the prose attain a height of mastery that aren't quite achieved in the following three stories. The writing has an ease and a grace that are hard to find, that only come from the most gifted of writers. And this is indeed writing with purpose. The `grafin', or countess, in this story, is an exquisitely drawn character, a perfect balance of royal aloofness and pretension with human vulnerability and insecurity.
The other three stories are treasures as well, though on a second tier. Of them, the best is "An African Story," in which Theroux first summarizes a half-dozen novellas written by a fictitious South African writer, then tells of the tragic downfall of the writer. The writer's stories, in many ways, foreshadow his own life's events in a way that underscores the intrinsic ties between life and literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Not complete
Review: I enjoyed some of the stories and some I didn't. But that's the way it is with collections of short stories. I was not disturbed by any of the stories, although I should have read the Amazon reviews before picking up the book as I was not at all prepared for what was coming. But the stories and the feelings of lust and loss were very intersting. I just didn't feel that any of the characters were developed fully. The first story, The Strangers at the Palazzo D'Oro was the best in my opinion. I always enjoy stories that are told from the perspective of the main character looking back on their life. I just wish there would've been a little more to it. Sex gets old when there's not more dialogue and plot.
Rating:
Summary: Not complete
Review: I enjoyed some of the stories and some I didn't. But that's the way it is with collections of short stories. I was not disturbed by any of the stories, although I should have read the Amazon reviews before picking up the book as I was not at all prepared for what was coming. But the stories and the feelings of lust and loss were very intersting. I just didn't feel that any of the characters were developed fully. The first story, The Strangers at the Palazzo D'Oro was the best in my opinion. I always enjoy stories that are told from the perspective of the main character looking back on their life. I just wish there would've been a little more to it. Sex gets old when there's not more dialogue and plot.
Rating: 
Summary: Literary Doodles
Review: I often don't like to read short stories. For me, they are not - in general you understand - as satisfying as a novel. Too hasty and short if they are good, too unfulfilling and short if they are not. This is a slightly different case for me.The theme of the title story is sort of retold in a different framework in a second one. Neither to me are satisfying. With the Palazzo story I get the feeling that it SHOULD HAVE BEEN a novel but that there really was only a limited story to tell. Sex without conversation gets dull even for an author. The "readalike" seemed to be another way to try and draw out the same story. Neither worked for me. The stories that are grouped together under the "Judas" theme posed an even more difficult issue for me. They seemed like doodles. By that I mean - Theroux wanted the characters in them to do something but couldn't settle on one thing. So he tried in different ways, and lacking the ability to develop them (they really aren't interesting people) gave us all the attempts in this short story collection. To me they were barebones, or sketches if you will, of an idea. Recently I saw a drawing show of Parmagianino's work at the Frick Museum in NYC. There were many sheets of what my friend calls "doodles" which is how he defines sketches and studies for "real" drawings or paintings. I asked myself why I loved looking at the art studies but resented reading what I thought were literary studies. I think the reason is that an artist's thought process is interesting for comparison to what he finally achieves. A writer's studies are not interesting in the same way unless there is a final definitive version. Also, the artist - Parmagianino for example - never expected his studies (doodles) to be seen. In contrast, Theroux has assembled his and published them as a final product. This is not satisfying to me. But I'm sure I am in the minority. Moral: I should stick to novels.
Rating:
Summary: When I'm Sixty-Four....
Review: I've always been a Paul Theroux fan so I found his latest fiction, THE STRANGER AT THE PALAZZO D'ORO, interesting for a couple of reasons:
The first is that we're reading about a 60-year-old man dealing with desire through his own life and the lives of others. Whether it's an aging countess from his own past or the ridiculous or tragic friends dealing with their own much-younger lovers, it was fascinating for me to read about people still grappling with lust, love and loss at a point in their lives when they should've figured that all out by now.
Perhaps that was Theroux's point: our own hearts will always remain a mystery no matter far we go or how much we see.
How much of this book reflects Theroux's own life?
That was the other reason I found this book so enjoyable: the first two novellas felt full of details from his own youth and I caught glimpses of incidents that would turn up in his earlier novels.
The countess in the first novella reminded me of the "patroness" from MY SECRET HISTORY. The boys plotting their revenge in the second novella reminded me of the comically-absurd caper of MURDER IN MOUNT HOLLY. The girl relieving herself outside of the boy's tent flashed me back to the "mutant" girl in the bathtub in O-ZONE.
Ultimately, I felt like I was listening to not only a great storyteller but also an elder trying to pass something on.
And it might be a warning.
Rating:
Summary: say nothing and you have secrets
Review: One thing you can say about Paul Theroux is that he appears to have no secrets, if you believe the quote in my review title from 'A Judas Memoir', one of the four stories in this collection. My title is actually an excerpt from a longer quote: 'naked people are strong, weak people make jokes, say nothing and you have secrets'.
All four stories are about youth and age. About the foolish confidence of youth before social constraints come into play, and about the frail vulnerability of the aged - yes, they too can - and do - make mistakes. For me, the title story of this book was far too ugly for me to really enjoy. For a while I liked 'An African Story' best. But there appear to be jokes - things that made me laugh - does that make Mr Theroux weak? - or was he trying to make the lead character appear weak? The sad thing about the mistakes of the aged - shown several times in these stories - is that often they do not have the time to throw their arms in the air and say 'How Fascinating!' as Benjamin Zander would recommend (the fascination being the opportunity to learn).
These stories are exotic and often erotic - although I would certainly avoid making any recommendation based on the erotic aspect of the stories. Repeatedly I found the sadness of the uncertainty of youth - the desires and dreams that probably will never be fulfilled, the acceptance of constraints - and the sadness of aging which occurs with such regret - why can the adventures of youth not continue?
Here's another quote - this time from 'An African Story' - 'People who read are not happy or else why would they be alone in a room with a book in their hands?'
Other recommendations:
Milroy the Magician - Paul Theroux
any of Mr Theroux's travel books (such as 'Riding the Iron Rooster')
The Art of Possibility - Benjamin Zander
Rating:
Summary: Boys will be boys
Review: Paul Theroux's characters -- men and boys mostly -- don't evolve much beyond coming to terms with their their sexual desires, but these are compelling yarns that illustrate how everyday life can sometimes take a hard right into the Twilight Zone. The lengthy title story is your basic young-man-comes-of-age-with-older-woman, but its Italian venue and sexual slavery angle make it offbeat enough to hold the reader's attention through 108 pages. "An African Story," about a massive power shift in the relationship between a white landowner and his black mistress, also sucks in the reader with its twists and oddities. The foreign locations play to Theroux's strengths as a master travel writer. There is a novella about growing up in the U.S. that has its moments, but it's pretty basic boys-at-large material. The final tale about a retired lawyer obsessed with his Hawaiian maids recalls the African tale and has a curious charm. Theroux writes beautifully at times and these are fine stories for the most part, but there are better recent story collections working the same turf -- Richard Ford's "A Multitude of Sins" comes to mind. And the title story of Elmore Leonard's "When the Women Come Out to Dance" seems to capture what Theroux is in search of here in far fewer pages.
Rating:
Summary: Innocence and Desire, Corrupted
Review: Paul Theroux's collection of two novellas and two stories centers thematically on forbidden desire and the eroticism it evokes: between the old and the young, the employer and the employee, the priest and the boy, the wife and the milkman. Like much of Theroux's work, the corruption of innocence plays an important role in the unfolding of these tales. The title novella is a story within a story: a sixty year old American painter who arrives in Sicily to mark the period when he was twenty-one and entered into a bizarre relationship with an older and wealthy German woman. The reader is thrown into the lengthy flashback of how the painter came to know this woman, the Grafin, and her traveling companion. The Grafin turns out to be a sadist by day, a masochist by night, and the graphic encounters between the young man and the older woman contrast sharply with the civility and aloofness they maintain in public. The secret that was revealed to the young painter haunts him even years later, on his sixtieth birthday, when he encounters a nubile seventeen year old not far from where he first saw the wealthy woman. This frame is Theroux's weakness here, as the end turns on a gimmick instead of true emotion. Beautifully written but mannered, the novella does not achieve anything more than a fleeting pleasure. The other novella, A Judas Memoir, is told in four parts, and follows Andy, a boy with the first stirrings of desire. His first encounters with sex are painful, humiliating, and violent: a nun twists his ear as he sees the girl he is infatuated with, he witnessed the nudity of the milkman sleeping with his friend's mother, and he and his friends nearly kill a pedophile who happens to be the priest of their parish. Of the remaining two stories, "An African Story" is the stronger, and perhaps the best piece in the book. Like the title novella, it is an older man's reminiscence of an past desire, but here, in the shorter form, it has more urgency. "Disheveled Nymphs," the final piece, reads as more of an anecdote than a true short story, and is a dismal choice to end on. The collection lacks passion despite the desire it sets out to describe. Theroux's writing is adept, but it fails to take the reader beyond the petty moments of lust. I recommend this book only to fans of Theroux who want to keep up on his writing.
Rating:
Summary: Innocence and Desire, Corrupted
Review: Paul Theroux's collection of two novellas and two stories centers thematically on forbidden desire and the eroticism it evokes: between the old and the young, the employer and the employee, the priest and the boy, the wife and the milkman. Like much of Theroux's work, the corruption of innocence plays an important role in the unfolding of these tales. The title novella is a story within a story: a sixty year old American painter who arrives in Sicily to mark the period when he was twenty-one and entered into a bizarre relationship with an older and wealthy German woman. The reader is thrown into the lengthy flashback of how the painter came to know this woman, the Grafin, and her traveling companion. The Grafin turns out to be a sadist by day, a masochist by night, and the graphic encounters between the young man and the older woman contrast sharply with the civility and aloofness they maintain in public. The secret that was revealed to the young painter haunts him even years later, on his sixtieth birthday, when he encounters a nubile seventeen year old not far from where he first saw the wealthy woman. This frame is Theroux's weakness here, as the end turns on a gimmick instead of true emotion. Beautifully written but mannered, the novella does not achieve anything more than a fleeting pleasure. The other novella, A Judas Memoir, is told in four parts, and follows Andy, a boy with the first stirrings of desire. His first encounters with sex are painful, humiliating, and violent: a nun twists his ear as he sees the girl he is infatuated with, he witnessed the nudity of the milkman sleeping with his friend's mother, and he and his friends nearly kill a pedophile who happens to be the priest of their parish. Of the remaining two stories, "An African Story" is the stronger, and perhaps the best piece in the book. Like the title novella, it is an older man's reminiscence of an past desire, but here, in the shorter form, it has more urgency. "Disheveled Nymphs," the final piece, reads as more of an anecdote than a true short story, and is a dismal choice to end on. The collection lacks passion despite the desire it sets out to describe. Theroux's writing is adept, but it fails to take the reader beyond the petty moments of lust. I recommend this book only to fans of Theroux who want to keep up on his writing.
Rating:
Summary: Theroux Fans Will Like It, Others, Maybe Not
Review: The title novella in THE STRANGER AT THE PALAZZO D'ORO, as well as the other novella and the two stories that accompany it all concern very out-of-the-ordinary sexual encounters (to say the least). The title novella, however, concerns the pairing of a younger man with an older, far more experiend (and very strange) woman, while the other three concern themselves with older men and younger women. All four, however, cost the men in question dearly...whether it be in the realm of innocence, finances, emotion or respectability. The title novella takes place in Taomina, Sicily in 1962. The protagonist/narrator is Gilford Mariner, a twenty-one year old painter who has traveled to Taomina hoping to find something of inspiration. What he finds is the Palazzo d'Oro (now a hotel) and its strange inhabitants, a young Iraqi doctor named Haroun and an older, sophisticated woman simply called "the Graefin" (which is "Countess" is German). Mariner enters into a strange relationship with the Graefin, a relationship from which he will only be released once he learns the Graefin's "secret." I don't want to give away anything of the plot, so let's just say that the Graefin's secret was pretty transparent, yet it took Mariner most of the novella to discover just what it was. Oh, well, he was only twenty-one...I can, and will, make an allowance for that. The novella, "The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro" is told in a frame when Mariner has reached his sixtieth birthday and has "returned to the scene of the crime." Although he terms it his "only story," it is probably just the one that is the most bizarre. Though it could be termed a story of sexual awakening, I think "a sexual nightmare" describes it far more aptly. The characters were impossible to like or empathize with, nevertheless, I liked it. I liked its exoticism and decadence and it certainly has an abundance of both. The other novella in THE STRANGER AT THE PALAZZO D'ORO is titled "A Judas Memoir" and is told in four parts. In this novella, we move away from sunburnt, exotic Sicily to New England, something I was definitely sorry to see happen. From the book's title, I had rashly assumed that all of the novellas/stories would take place in either Italy or Sicily and I was sorry they didn't. The protagonist of "A Judas Memoir," is a young boy named Andy. Andy's story, set in New England is, in its own way, a "younger" version of Mariner's bizarre sojourn in Sicily. In the four parts of the novella, we learn of four episodes in Andy's young life that represent his own sexual awakening. These episodes are strange and harrowing, to say the least, and like Mariner's experiences they represent corruption and the loss of innocence. I didn't like this novella at all and it was my least favorite story in the entire collection. Still, it was not without merit. The first story, "An African Story," takes place in the Transvaal. The protagonist is Lourens Prinsloo, writer, farmer, husband and the father of two grown sons. When Prinsloo falls in love with Noloyiso, a black teacher, he must decide whether or not to forfeit all he has spent years building...his marriage, his farm, his wealth, his respectability...for what he hopes might turn the tide in his life to something he wants even more. The ending of this story is an ironic one and I liked it. I thought it was quite fitting and very satisfying. The final story, "Disheveled Nymphs," was more subtle than the other three. It revolves around an eccentric art collector, Leland Wevill (very strange name), who has retired to a Hawaiian paradise where he amuses himself by pointing out his guests ignorance of the most prized paintings in his collection. When Wevill becomes enamoured with the daughter of his Hawaiian housekeeper, he, too, will have to pay a price for his indescretion. I thought this story was very nuanced and subtle and I liked it, though it did lack the energy of the one that preceeded it. Still, a lack of energy is associated with decadence and I thought it quite fitting. Although some readers may think lust is what Theroux is showcasing is these novellas and stories, I think it is something else. I think it's the price we pay for lust, i.e., expulsion from paradise. Each of the characters loses, rather than gains, from his experiences with lust and the book is thus more focused on decadence and ennui than it is on wisdom. Theroux's writing throughout the book, but especially in the title novella, is beautiful...lovely and gracefully nuanced...but it lacks energy and passion. I think this was a good choice, given the extreme decadence of the stories, but it (along with the bizarre quality of stories) makes it very difficult to feel any empathy with the characters. We aren't participants in their lives, we're not emotionally engaged, we're simply observers. The sexual details in THE STRANGER AT THE PALAZZO D'ORO range from out-of-the-ordinary to downright bizarre, something else that will no doubt distance some readers from the characters and cause a failure of sympathy for them. Theroux's descriptions of some of the sexual acts is as bizarre as are the acts themselves, which was, at least for me, a little off-putting. I am a Paul Theroux fan and I sometimes like edgy, bizarre fiction, so I rather liked most of this collection, but I'll be the first to admit that this book is certainly not for everyone. And, it certainly doesn't represent Theroux at his finest, as he was in THE MOSQUITO COAST. Still, THE STRANGER AT THE PALAZZO D'ORO is a fascinating look at ennui and decadence and one Theroux fans will no doubt appreciate.
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