Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74592 in Books
• Published on: 1988-10-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Synopsis
"The New Confessions" is the outrageous, extraordinary, hilarious and heartbreaking autobiography of John James Todd, a Scotsman born in 1899 and one of the great self-appointed (and failed) geniuses of the twentieth century. 'An often magnificent feat of story-telling and panoramic reconstruction...John James Todd's reminiscences carry us through the ups and downs of a long and lively career that begins in genteel Edinburgh, devastatingly detours out to the Western Front, forks off, after a period of cosy family life in London, to the electric excitements of the Berlin film-world of the Twenties, then moves on to Hollywood...to ordeal by McCarthyism and eventual escape to Europe' - Peter Kemp, "Observer".

Customer Reviews

More greatness from Boyd
William Boyd is a brilliant writer, and this sweeping panorama of the 20th Century is one of his best books. Unlike in Any Human Heart, he presents us with a narrator who is, in many ways (maybe in most ways), extremely unlikeable. The fact that we understand the influences and events that have shaped Todd's character doesn't make us overlook his egotism and coldbloodedness--but these traits of his, like Rouuseau's own flaws, are what make the book so fascinating. I do agree with those who didn't like the ending. The last, say, sixth of the book, the later Los Angeles days, don't live up to the first part, but that's a small quibble when confronted by the brilliance of this novel, especially the WWI section.

another triumph
The New Confessions has similarities to Any Human Heart, encompassing as it does a man's life from boyhood through to old age. The main difference is that while Any Human Heart unfolded contemporaneously in the form of a journal or diary, The New Confessions is written retrospectively - an old man looking back on his life, remembering the highs and lows.

The story is as gripping as any of Boyd's novels, largely due to Boyd's immense talent in imbuing the ordinary with rivetting, magnetic fascination. The ordures of public school initiation, the fierceness of first love (or crush), the passions, terrors, obsessions and regrets of any life, are magnified and captured with breath-catching aplomb. Boyd is one of the few writers - Updike, Ishiguro and McEwan also spring to mind- who can make the reader giggle uncontrollably one minute and in the next reel from some gut-wrenchingly vivid drama.
The New Confessions follows John James Todd from his childhood in Edinburgh, under the care of his austere surgeon father and his sharp-witted and idiosyncratic nanny Oonagh , through schooldays and friendship with the mathematical child prodigy Hamish Malahide, to adulthood with all its attendant thwarted dreams, shocking traumas and rich relationships. John James may be selfish and self-centred - SPOILER: not only is he serially unfaithful to his long-suffering wife Sonia, but he has the cheek to hire a private investigator to see if she herself is being unfaithful; not only does he repeatedly chastise his older brother Thompson in his autobiography for being uncaring, but he manipulates Thompson into arranging a bank loan on which he subsequently defaults, and makes a pass at Thompson's wife; not only does he fail to ask others about their problems or lives but he witters endlessly about his own talent; not only does he cruelly note all physical flaws in his wife and brother but he deludedly comments to himself on his own good looks. Yet despite these glaring faults, John James is also funny, articulate, intelligent and a compelling character to read about. He is passionate about his career, his friends and his one true love. And Boyd's novel transports you in a hypnotised daze through all these beautifully drawn characters and events and manages to be sharp, witty, touching, devastating and gorgeously written at the same time. Another classic from one of our top five living British authors.

Seminal work - utterly spellbinding
A witty, twisting Bildungsroman that feeds the imagination with the history of a convincing but fictional life, although I found the mystery surrounding the final years rather disturbing.

This is, to my mind at least, real literary fiction, possibly amongst the best late 20th/early 21st century works. It is a joy to read something well-crafted and unsensational that has detail beyond the call of duty.

I really cannot recommend this book highly enough, although I would say that I prefer the cover design of the American version.