The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes

Rating:
Summary: Witty and thoughtful
Review: Marcel Theroux is the elder son of Paul Theroux and so it's not surprising that he would also try his hand at fiction. What is pleasantly surprising is how very good he is at it. "The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes" is a very well written and witty novel, with well drawn characters that may at times be a bit extreme, but are never cartoons.

Theroux's writing style owes nothing to his father's; I'm reminded more of a number of excellent British writers- the sort of comic irony one might find in David Lodge comes to mind, and there's a bit of the darker irony found in early Kingsley Amis. But the Theroux family does figure strongly in the book nonetheless. The protagonist's younger brother is an exaggerated version of the author's brother, and the father is an exaggerated- perhaps even parodied- version of Paul Theroux, right down to his eccentric hobby of beekeeping. The setting is Cape Cod, where the elder Theroux grew up and the author, like the protagonist, spent part of his childhood.

As for the story itself: It's intruiging enough to keep your attention to the very end, and the resolution ties together the threads in a way that's satisfying without being either entirely unexpected or too simple. A few threads are left unresolved, but then, that's how life often is.

This is Marcel Theroux's second novel, and he seems well on his way to being just as prolific as his father, and in time, just as skilled. I'm looking forward to reading his next book.

Rating:
Summary: Witty and thoughtful
Review: Marcel Theroux is the elder son of Paul Theroux and so it's not surprising that he would also try his hand at fiction. What is pleasantly surprising is how very good he is at it. "The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes" is a very well written and witty novel, with well drawn characters that may at times be a bit extreme, but are never cartoons.

Theroux's writing style owes nothing to his father's; I'm reminded more of a number of excellent British writers- the sort of comic irony one might find in David Lodge comes to mind, and there's a bit of the darker irony found in early Kingsley Amis. But the Theroux family does figure strongly in the book nonetheless. The protagonist's younger brother is an exaggerated version of the author's brother, and the father is an exaggerated- perhaps even parodied- version of Paul Theroux, right down to his eccentric hobby of beekeeping. The setting is Cape Cod, where the elder Theroux grew up and the author, like the protagonist, spent part of his childhood.

As for the story itself: It's intruiging enough to keep your attention to the very end, and the resolution ties together the threads in a way that's satisfying without being either entirely unexpected or too simple. A few threads are left unresolved, but then, that's how life often is.

This is Marcel Theroux's second novel, and he seems well on his way to being just as prolific as his father, and in time, just as skilled. I'm looking forward to reading his next book.

Rating:
Summary: Save your time and money
Review: Okay, so I liked the premise, and I liked the Sherlock Holmes references. But that was all I liked. This novel plods. The characters are sketchy, the plot barely there, and the narration put me straight to sleep.

Rating:
Summary: Save your time and money
Review: This book is filled with delights, not least of which is the light, deft touch the author employs as he deals charmingly with important and weighty issues of family relationships--fathers with sons, and brothers with each other. There's a freshness and gentleness of tone here that might even be cloying were it not for the acerbic, sometimes boisterous, humor which the author uses to leaven his narrative and keep his issues in perspective. Though there is a mystery at the heart of the novel, it's a quiet mystery, more important for the lessons it illuminates than for any thrills it may provide.

Damien March, the main character, is an expatriate American living in London and working for the BBC. Although he's had no contact with his uncle Patrick for twenty years, he finds himself the sudden beneficiary of his uncle's estate on Ionia, a fictional island off Cape Cod, an island which resembles the Martha's Vineyard of the past. The only catch is that he must not change the interior of the house, which is packed with bric-a-brac. When he decides to spend six months living in the house, he discovers several unpublished stories by his uncle, all concerning Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes's mysterious brother, who has committed a terrible crime, but for worthy reasons. The parallels Damien sees between Mycroft Holmes's relationship with Sherlock and his uncle Patrick's relationship with Damien's father lead him to investigate the crime and, ultimately, to come to a new understanding of what family means and what its enduring values may be.

It is possible that this fictional story reflects either directly or obliquely on the author's own relationship with his author-father, Paul Theroux, his author-uncle Alexander Theroux, his British TV-host-brother Louis, and the relationship of the elder Theroux brothers with each other. While these overlaps will provide tantalizing and fertile grounds for biographers, they are irrelevant to one's enjoyment of this narrative. Marcel Theroux, however, certainly seems to welcome such speculation by setting of this novel off Cape Cod, where Paul Theroux lives, and by his references to Medford, where the elder Theroux authors grew up. The accurate Cape Cod descriptions, the "Yankee spirit," and the unpretentious lives so well illustrated by the peripheral characters here add immeasurably to the realism of this delightful study of family values. A captivating novel. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: family and place; blood and water
Review: This is a book about quite serious matters written in a very light style. I found that I had to keep slowing myself down to savor the author's style, even though the odd events that unfolded made me want to rush along to figure out what was going on.

Damien March is a rather miserable person and not particularly heroic in any regard, but is still quite likeable. You root for him. His name would seem to refer to the Hesse novel about the character with the "mark of Cain", someone who is simply ill-starred. Theroux seems to be suggesting in this book that not knowing who you are can make you miserable. You may at first believe that his status as an American raised in Britain is what gives him this fish-in-somebody else's-water feeling, but it turns out to be more intriguing than that.

I believe that Marcel Theroux has been influenced by his father's writing. This book is in a way an oblique commentary on the elder Theroux's My Other Life, in which he fictionalizes his own biography in a wry way that is by turns self-effacing and self-inflating. I also thought that both authors had the tendency to write relatively unstylized passages that serve to join together densely crafted intervals. The former move the narrative forward, while the latter are what convey the deeper ideas embedded in the narrative.

One of the subthemes of Marcel Theroux's novel is the nature of the creative process; how do writers take information from the world around them and make it into fiction. What is real in a ficitional story and what is made up? Are their truths about the author even in the made-up portions? Another important subtheme is the nature of family relations (the complications of the procreative process). These two subthemes are related via their common element of confusion over the difference between truth and fiction, and its consequences.

This is a deceptively dense book. The plot itself is necessarily kept rather simple in order to make room for the layers of subtext that are much more the point of the novel. Bolder than Mandingo, indeed.

Rating:
Summary: family and place; blood and water
Review: This is a book about quite serious matters written in a very light style. I found that I had to keep slowing myself down to savor the author's style, even though the odd events that unfolded made me want to rush along to figure out what was going on.

Damien March is a rather miserable person and not particularly heroic in any regard, but is still quite likeable. You root for him. His name would seem to refer to the Hesse novel about the character with the "mark of Cain", someone who is simply ill-starred. Theroux seems to be suggesting in this book that not knowing who you are can make you miserable. You may at first believe that his status as an American raised in Britain is what gives him this fish-in-somebody else's-water feeling, but it turns out to be more intriguing than that.

I believe that Marcel Theroux has been influenced by his father's writing. This book is in a way an oblique commentary on the elder Theroux's My Other Life, in which he fictionalizes his own biography in a wry way that is by turns self-effacing and self-inflating. I also thought that both authors had the tendency to write relatively unstylized passages that serve to join together densely crafted intervals. The former move the narrative forward, while the latter are what convey the deeper ideas embedded in the narrative.

One of the subthemes of Marcel Theroux's novel is the nature of the creative process; how do writers take information from the world around them and make it into fiction. What is real in a ficitional story and what is made up? Are their truths about the author even in the made-up portions? Another important subtheme is the nature of family relations (the complications of the procreative process). These two subthemes are related via their common element of confusion over the difference between truth and fiction, and its consequences.

This is a deceptively dense book. The plot itself is necessarily kept rather simple in order to make room for the layers of subtext that are much more the point of the novel. Bolder than Mandingo, indeed.