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My Other Life
Life, to the hero of My Other Life, has no apparent plot, so it can seem messier than fiction—sometimes it appears that he is leading many separate lives. The only connecting strand is that they all involve the same person.
The fictional narrator of these memoirs, a man of different guises, be it Pavel Medved, Paulie, or Paul Theroux, has reconstructed his past, giving it wit and life, tragedy and pathos, and imposed an order on it through careful editing. Inordinately fond of train travel, he takes us on a journey over a career spanning thirty years and distills it into poignant episodes. From his early education by his eccentric Uncle Hal, an unlikely author and lover of dog biscuits, we are taken through Theroux’s years as a fledgling novelist in literary London, under the wing of the rapacious Lady Max, to his grief at finding himself alone again, at age fifty, in the town of his youth.
With enormous insight and self-knowledge Theroux divulges his belief in secrets: the fake occupations he has given himself—particle physicist, cartographer, teacher; the false names with which he has misled people; the absurd events of his life, including a run-in with a deluded fan who has recommended to him the writings of the more famous Paul Theroux; and his uncanny meeting with an elderly German writer whose life has almost exactly mirrored his own.
Complex, candid, and confessional, the distinctive qualities of My Other Life will be instantly recognizable to admirers of Theroux’s My Secret History. In this extraordinarily stylish and clever novel, the real Paul Theroux has created a protagonist of depth and great subtlety whose fall from grace sets him adrift—until he recognizes again the redeeming power of his art.
The fictional narrator of these memoirs, a man of different guises, be it Pavel Medved, Paulie, or Paul Theroux, has reconstructed his past, giving it wit and life, tragedy and pathos, and imposed an order on it through careful editing. Inordinately fond of train travel, he takes us on a journey over a career spanning thirty years and distills it into poignant episodes. From his early education by his eccentric Uncle Hal, an unlikely author and lover of dog biscuits, we are taken through Theroux’s years as a fledgling novelist in literary London, under the wing of the rapacious Lady Max, to his grief at finding himself alone again, at age fifty, in the town of his youth.
With enormous insight and self-knowledge Theroux divulges his belief in secrets: the fake occupations he has given himself—particle physicist, cartographer, teacher; the false names with which he has misled people; the absurd events of his life, including a run-in with a deluded fan who has recommended to him the writings of the more famous Paul Theroux; and his uncanny meeting with an elderly German writer whose life has almost exactly mirrored his own.
Complex, candid, and confessional, the distinctive qualities of My Other Life will be instantly recognizable to admirers of Theroux’s My Secret History. In this extraordinarily stylish and clever novel, the real Paul Theroux has created a protagonist of depth and great subtlety whose fall from grace sets him adrift—until he recognizes again the redeeming power of his art.
456 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1996
35 people are currently reading
595 people want to read
About the author
Paul Theroux
238 books2,605 followersPaul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work is The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), a travelogue about a trip he made by train from Great Britain through Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, through South Asia, then South-East Asia, up through East Asia, as far east as Japan, and then back across Russia to his point of origin. Although perhaps best known as a travelogue writer, Theroux has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast.
He is the father of Marcel and Louis Theroux, and the brother of Alexander and Peter. Justin Theroux is his nephew.
He is the father of Marcel and Louis Theroux, and the brother of Alexander and Peter. Justin Theroux is his nephew.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
March 5, 2020
My Other Life is a sort of fictionalized biography in which day to day life passing through the author’s wealthy imagination turns into a picturesque adventure. The book is a collection of flowery vignettes that add up into an enthralling novel.
Book awards and prizes: they are always a result of consensus and compromise therefore any truly revolutionary or innovative books hardly ever win awards… They either turn scandalous or are gathering dust on shelves for years.
And the majority of awarded books just become safely buried in time.
Or Uncle Hal would chant at them, ‘Harry Martinson! Odysseus Elytis! Rudolf Eucken! Karl Gjellerup! Verner von Heidenstam!’ and sometimes more names; and when he had the attention of the whole room he would ask, ‘Who are they?’
None of the book people knew until Uncle Hal laughingly told them that these men had all won the Nobel Prize for ‘lechera-chore—excuse me!’
Book awards and prizes: they are always a result of consensus and compromise therefore any truly revolutionary or innovative books hardly ever win awards… They either turn scandalous or are gathering dust on shelves for years.
And the majority of awarded books just become safely buried in time.
December 30, 2010
My heart initially sank at the epigram from Borges. "Not another thinly veiled autobiography, roman a clef, self-analysis masquerading as novel, under the forgiving blessing of 'I do not know which of us has written this page' bullshit," I thought. It turns out to be better than that. Essentially the story of 'Paul Theroux's' (the scare quotes are necessary) marriage and divorce, set against the background of his increasing commercial success. There are some lovely stories here--the novel proceeds mostly through short stories set at increments in 'Paul's' life. Most of this is three star material: capably narrated, interesting descriptions. The pair of chapters that comes closest, apparently, to describing the separation--"Forerunners" and "Champagne"--elevate this enormously. They are gems alone worth the price of admission. A few chapters are dead clunkers. "George and Me" is pretty irritating. And one gets the sense, sometimes, from the travel-writing 'Paul' that he wants to keep all the places he writes about for himself. But then what is the point? Why write about them if you so sternly begrudge anyone else for being interested in or knowing anything about those places? Why such a pedant? Ah, but that's 'Paul' who does that, not the author Theroux, so everything must be forgiven. Or something like that. I suspect that elements of the breakup (which 'Paul' draws a discreet veil over) are embedded all over the book in the dialogue of various characters in other situations (such as the dismal overheard conversations at the Sandringham in "The Queen's Touch"). Certainly enough material here to keep the biographers guessing and speculating, which must, in part, be the point.
July 14, 2015
Looking over what I had written, I became hopeful. The book was strange, true, comic, and unexpected – that was what mattered most. I wanted people to believe it and like it, and to find something of themselves expressed in it.
Paul Theroux calls My Other Life “an imaginary memoir...driven by my alter ego's murmur of 'what if?'”. As this is the first of Theroux's books that I've read, I had no way to know what might have been based on his own life or not. But, after googling this book upon completion, it would seem that this fictional autobiography follows his own life exactly: a writer named Paul Theroux is born in Medford, Massachusetts, goes to college, joins the Peace Corps, moves to Malawi, marries a British woman, has two sons, moves to Singapore, moves to England, gets divorced, and moves to America. Along the way, Theroux becomes rather famous for his novels (Mosquito Coast) and his travel books (The Great Railway Bazaar) and appears to live happily ever after.
Each chapter in My Other Life is set in a different locale and reads like a short story. Theroux meets incredible characters and sometimes he's in awe of them and sometimes he feels superior to them, but always, Theroux himself is the most interesting person in the room; he is definitely the protagonist of his own tales. Consistently, the writing is interesting, and it's obvious why he has made a mark as a travel writer, as he captures an African leprosorium:
Ever since I had arrived the night before, the leper village had been audible. It smoldered and crackled beneath the trees at the foot of the priests' hill. There were always voices and shouts and laughter, the continual cockcrows of the Africans called tambala, and the thump of the pounding of pestles in mortars as the women made ufa, the corn flour that was one of the village staples. The village was also the smell of wood smoke and that other, obscurer odor, of decay, of human bodies, the smell of disease and frailty and death, which was also the smell of dirt.
And the Far East experience for an ex-pat American during the Vietnam War years:
Singapore was an island of party-givers, everyone drumming up business or being social...They were all strangers to me. They seemed not exotic but remote and foolish, inhabiting a world so different from mine that I had nothing to say to them: and they did not know me. I hated them for their parties; I also thought: Please invite me.
And the London night life:
It was important in London to leave a party or start home before the public houses closed, for just after eleven o'clock the streets were thronged with drunks – all men, their faces wolfish and pale, yelling at passing cars or else staggering and scrapping. Some of them loitered, looking ravenous, eating chips with greasy fingers out of pouches of old newspapers. All over London these men, turned out of the pubs, were pissing in doorways.
My Other Life is often funny – like the beginning chapter about Uncle Hal, which made me think this was going to be a hilarious romp of a book – and sometimes touching – like with the strange chapter in which he meets his doppelganger; an older man who warns Theroux of the heartbreaking consequences of his looming divorce. Failure is a sort of funeral, and a person fleeing a collapsed marriage is both the corpse and the mourner.
I found it strange when he incorporated real people into his “fiction” – with an unflattering portrayal of Anthony Burgess (with an even more unflattering portrayal of Theroux's ex-wife in this section, which prompted her to write an irate letter to The New Yorker after it first appeared in its pages as a short story) and a surreal dinner at which the Queen was present (and this story apparently caused a diplomatic fuss when Theroux – who has never actually met the Queen – had her uttering some decidedly non-politically correct opinions). While reading, I could never be sure what was based on fact and what was entirely fictive.
Theroux is unafraid to make himself look bad and spends some time mocking his own celebrity (and especially when he's trying to parlay his celebrity into sexual favours – was he really this much of a cad?) And he spends a lot of time writing about writing, and even when he's writing about reading, it feels like he's talking about his own work:
A person reading a wonderful book is overwhelmed by feelings of inspiration and ignorance, bafflement and belief, and becomes a sort of dogged, dazzled apostle, limping after the priestly figure of the writer.
So much of what I learned about the real Paul Theroux came after I finished My Other Life, and my favourite discovery was the reaction of his older brother (highbrow author Alexander Theroux), who reviewed the book for Boston Magazine, writing, in part:
Nobody I know has written so many books (20 novels, 10 travel books) with so little serious critical recognition to show for it... We in the family don't mind his affected gentility, his smug and self-important airs, his urgent insistence that he's a friend of lords and ladies, and only laugh at the fame he courts.
Love that – Alexander goes on to share facts about his brother's digestive issues (he eats prunes! Every day!) and I can only imagine what family feud led to this review (because the Theroux family doesn't really make an appearance in this book). In the end, My Other Life was a rather strange experience: like I said, it reads like a collection of short stories rather than a cohesive novel (which is likely what any of our life stories look like anyway), and taken as individual units, each story was interesting or amusing in some way. I see many reviewers saying that they appreciate seeing some of the facts behind what they've already read of Theroux and I'm obliged to go at that backwards: having read this “imaginary memoir”, I'm looking forward to reading the books that Theroux is more famous for – he can certainly write, that's for sure.
September 22, 2009
I get the feeling that I will love Theroux a little more with every book of him that I read. And you know what? The man has written a lot of books. A LOT of books. Just thinking about all the ones I haven't read yet makes me all giddy with anticipation.
"My Other Life" is a fake biography (which is why I'm filing it under biographies). But it could be real. It feels real. In a typical Theroux fashion, he puts himself out on the line in a way that makes you...feel. I know no other writer who gets the reader that close and personal, regardless if it's a travel book, a fake biography or simply a novel. I worship him.
(take that, critics. You just don't get the genius. *walks off with nose up high until she trips over a stack of books*)
"My Other Life" is a fake biography (which is why I'm filing it under biographies). But it could be real. It feels real. In a typical Theroux fashion, he puts himself out on the line in a way that makes you...feel. I know no other writer who gets the reader that close and personal, regardless if it's a travel book, a fake biography or simply a novel. I worship him.
(take that, critics. You just don't get the genius. *walks off with nose up high until she trips over a stack of books*)
September 18, 2016
This quasi-novel, quasi-biography follows a roughly familiar chronological pathway, starting with the protagonist in Africa in his early twenties and ending in the north east of the USA in his late forties. These are short stories, published elsewhere (magazines, newspapers) at various points in time, cobbled together to make a proper book.
It mostly works. Although an editor could have tied a few loose ends together better, and also picked up on a few discrepancies (here's one such discrepancy I picked up on: in the third chapter, when he's in Singapore teaching English and his family is still very young, at the very end of that chapter and time period he steals a necklace from a ghastly woman which he later sells to buy a house in London (it was the early 1970s and it was a very expensive necklace); and in a later chapter he reflects back on that same time period when he settled in the UK and he was paying rent -- what happened to the house purchase from those ill-gotten gains? Clearly an oversight not picked up when someone edited the entire piece).
I kind of liked this fictional Paul Theroux, he's clearly intelligent, funny at times, got a good dose of modesty balanced with healthy confidence. He's self-reflective at times, but not to the point of neuroses, he takes action when required, he takes some risks, he values things that make him very likeable and believable and a relatively normal person (the end of day ritual when his young sons come home, the joys of domestic life, praise from a reader).
But it's in his writing about women that he comes undone for me. Every single woman described in this book is awful, one way or another. Sometimes more ways than not. The first woman he writes about, Birdie the volunteer in the African leper colony, seems positively adolescent - unsophisticated, obvious, manipulative. He actively dislikes her. And yet he ends up alternating between pursuing her in this jagged passive-aggressive way, and allowing her to pursue him. They engage in some farcical dress up game (she's in a nun's costume, well real nun's clothes actually although turned into a costume by virtue of the fact she has no right to wear them, not being a nun, and he in a priests garb) - is this some weird version of playing doctors-and-nurses that only Catholics could fathom?
This is our first taste that our main man telling the story perhaps may have an issue with the ladies, perhaps may be misanthropic, or just "have issues" with women. We're not sure, but reading about this particular Paul's version of Birdie and his relationship with her leaves a slightly sour taste.
From there we move onto other women unattractively described. Lady Max in London is positively vile. Openly manipulative, she doesn't even try to hide her selfish and flagrant wishes toward our main man Paul. She wants him, she's out to get him, she's so aggressive in her pursuit of him she goes so far to turn up at his (family) home unannounced and scare the pants off him (figuratively, not literally, although we get the strong feeling she would have preferred the former). She's not only mean with money, she's insensitive about it - forcing others to go Dutch at a restaurant meal she's arranged (the invitation suggested a meal at her home, which then turned into a nasty restaurant scene with Lady Max ordering bottle upon bottle of expensive wine, then carving up the bill to surprised and outraged "guests"), walking away from taxi's, necessitating our man Paul pick up the tab, and so on. She's awful. She's not even physically attractive in Paul's description of her. Why on earth he persists in his "relationship" (is it that? It's more like prey and predator) with her is not clear. He doesn't even enjoy the benefits of this association, which is all the doors Lady Max is opening for him, all the strings she's pulling, to make him more of a commercial and literary success. He seems to resent all the perks and advantages, or else to discount or minimise them - they aren't important.
So this is our second clue that our main man Paul has a problem with the ladies. This is our second woman described in far from flattering terms, not only the woman herself but her relationship to Paul. He seems equally manipulated and entranced by these crafty creatures, resenting any positives that might come from their company, needing and even wanting them, and yet finding it essential to keep them at arms length, lest they... what? Devour him? We get a clue to this later on when he speaks of the potential of having his soul sucked out of him by yet another unappealing woman.
The weirdest of all the descriptions of women are the Queen. Yes, I'm referring to Elizabeth II, the Queen of England. He is living in the US when he receives an invitation to a private dinner back in London where the Queen will be guest of honour. Despite the fact he is emotionally and psychologically too fragile to even leave the house, and financially almost destitute (we're not clued into the full details of that, and are left to assume his separation is bleeding him dry), he agrees to go. After being dragged through the horrors of extreme discount travel (at the ripe ole age of 49, this ain't some late teen gap year travelling where bed bugs and sleeping on train platforms are de rigeur), we fiiiiinally get to the dinner.
It's well written, and the scene with Prince Philip in particular is very funny (the Prince is described as a very difficult conversationalist, blocking all attempts at normal discourse in a most obtuse way). But then - oh dear me, it's so ludicrous, how did our main man Paul think we'd ever believe this?, as the Queen is preparing her exit, he bumps into her in an empty room where she is, wait for this, adjusting her dress. Riiiiight. The Queen then initiates a conversation with him about the "frightful muddle" he's in, referring, we are led to believe, to his personal troubles with his separation from wife and family home. Huh? The Queen (a) knows him well enough to recognise him (b) knows about his personal troubles (c) cares enough to mention those personal troubles (d) is personal in her remarks to a strange man she's only just met that evening and will never see again.
This is all so ridiculous. The Queen then goes on to, wait again, give him some advice. YES! The Queen has advice of a personal nature on how our main man Paul can get out of his emotional and psychological pit of misery. Amazing! They exchange words that some Englishmen and their psychiatrists might not ever exchange, and our main man Paul is left pondering the wisdom, and touch (the Queen touches him on the wrist before departing, it's her final gift), bestowed from the highest of the high upon him, the lowest of the lowest.
It's utterly absurd, and of all the descriptions of his exchanges and interactions with women, the one that takes us the furtherest from "possible" to "preposterous".
By this stage of the book, many chapters in (we're closing in on the end), we have read enough about his relationships with women to know for sure that our main man Paul is deeply delusional and addled when it comes to understanding, and writing about, women. We've been introduced to a selfish and calculating wife, a lonely and solitary village dweller with whom he spends an evening and later discovers has murderous tendencies, a mistress who tries to suck his soul out of his body, and a psychiatrist with whom he falls insanely and desperately in love who keeps her professional cool and disappoints him beyond all reason.
But our main man Paul is most revealed, most laid bare, when it comes to how he thinks about and how he feels about women when making up that wacky story about the Queen. All his hated hopes, his desperate dreams, his naive expectations - they're all there. I'm not sure he's a man I'd particularly enjoy talking to at a dinner party. I don't trust his instincts when it comes to understanding and relating to women.
I read through to the end, wanting to know how the book, and our main man Paul's story, ended. At least as far as it got, which was to his early 50s (the real Paul Theroux is now in his seventies). He's had a varied and interesting life, and he's reflected on it with some intelligence and humour in this quasi-real and quasi-imagined look back at that life. A curious read for me, one I enjoyed immensely at times and one I found deeply dissatisfying.
It mostly works. Although an editor could have tied a few loose ends together better, and also picked up on a few discrepancies (here's one such discrepancy I picked up on: in the third chapter, when he's in Singapore teaching English and his family is still very young, at the very end of that chapter and time period he steals a necklace from a ghastly woman which he later sells to buy a house in London (it was the early 1970s and it was a very expensive necklace); and in a later chapter he reflects back on that same time period when he settled in the UK and he was paying rent -- what happened to the house purchase from those ill-gotten gains? Clearly an oversight not picked up when someone edited the entire piece).
I kind of liked this fictional Paul Theroux, he's clearly intelligent, funny at times, got a good dose of modesty balanced with healthy confidence. He's self-reflective at times, but not to the point of neuroses, he takes action when required, he takes some risks, he values things that make him very likeable and believable and a relatively normal person (the end of day ritual when his young sons come home, the joys of domestic life, praise from a reader).
But it's in his writing about women that he comes undone for me. Every single woman described in this book is awful, one way or another. Sometimes more ways than not. The first woman he writes about, Birdie the volunteer in the African leper colony, seems positively adolescent - unsophisticated, obvious, manipulative. He actively dislikes her. And yet he ends up alternating between pursuing her in this jagged passive-aggressive way, and allowing her to pursue him. They engage in some farcical dress up game (she's in a nun's costume, well real nun's clothes actually although turned into a costume by virtue of the fact she has no right to wear them, not being a nun, and he in a priests garb) - is this some weird version of playing doctors-and-nurses that only Catholics could fathom?
This is our first taste that our main man telling the story perhaps may have an issue with the ladies, perhaps may be misanthropic, or just "have issues" with women. We're not sure, but reading about this particular Paul's version of Birdie and his relationship with her leaves a slightly sour taste.
From there we move onto other women unattractively described. Lady Max in London is positively vile. Openly manipulative, she doesn't even try to hide her selfish and flagrant wishes toward our main man Paul. She wants him, she's out to get him, she's so aggressive in her pursuit of him she goes so far to turn up at his (family) home unannounced and scare the pants off him (figuratively, not literally, although we get the strong feeling she would have preferred the former). She's not only mean with money, she's insensitive about it - forcing others to go Dutch at a restaurant meal she's arranged (the invitation suggested a meal at her home, which then turned into a nasty restaurant scene with Lady Max ordering bottle upon bottle of expensive wine, then carving up the bill to surprised and outraged "guests"), walking away from taxi's, necessitating our man Paul pick up the tab, and so on. She's awful. She's not even physically attractive in Paul's description of her. Why on earth he persists in his "relationship" (is it that? It's more like prey and predator) with her is not clear. He doesn't even enjoy the benefits of this association, which is all the doors Lady Max is opening for him, all the strings she's pulling, to make him more of a commercial and literary success. He seems to resent all the perks and advantages, or else to discount or minimise them - they aren't important.
So this is our second clue that our main man Paul has a problem with the ladies. This is our second woman described in far from flattering terms, not only the woman herself but her relationship to Paul. He seems equally manipulated and entranced by these crafty creatures, resenting any positives that might come from their company, needing and even wanting them, and yet finding it essential to keep them at arms length, lest they... what? Devour him? We get a clue to this later on when he speaks of the potential of having his soul sucked out of him by yet another unappealing woman.
The weirdest of all the descriptions of women are the Queen. Yes, I'm referring to Elizabeth II, the Queen of England. He is living in the US when he receives an invitation to a private dinner back in London where the Queen will be guest of honour. Despite the fact he is emotionally and psychologically too fragile to even leave the house, and financially almost destitute (we're not clued into the full details of that, and are left to assume his separation is bleeding him dry), he agrees to go. After being dragged through the horrors of extreme discount travel (at the ripe ole age of 49, this ain't some late teen gap year travelling where bed bugs and sleeping on train platforms are de rigeur), we fiiiiinally get to the dinner.
It's well written, and the scene with Prince Philip in particular is very funny (the Prince is described as a very difficult conversationalist, blocking all attempts at normal discourse in a most obtuse way). But then - oh dear me, it's so ludicrous, how did our main man Paul think we'd ever believe this?, as the Queen is preparing her exit, he bumps into her in an empty room where she is, wait for this, adjusting her dress. Riiiiight. The Queen then initiates a conversation with him about the "frightful muddle" he's in, referring, we are led to believe, to his personal troubles with his separation from wife and family home. Huh? The Queen (a) knows him well enough to recognise him (b) knows about his personal troubles (c) cares enough to mention those personal troubles (d) is personal in her remarks to a strange man she's only just met that evening and will never see again.
This is all so ridiculous. The Queen then goes on to, wait again, give him some advice. YES! The Queen has advice of a personal nature on how our main man Paul can get out of his emotional and psychological pit of misery. Amazing! They exchange words that some Englishmen and their psychiatrists might not ever exchange, and our main man Paul is left pondering the wisdom, and touch (the Queen touches him on the wrist before departing, it's her final gift), bestowed from the highest of the high upon him, the lowest of the lowest.
It's utterly absurd, and of all the descriptions of his exchanges and interactions with women, the one that takes us the furtherest from "possible" to "preposterous".
By this stage of the book, many chapters in (we're closing in on the end), we have read enough about his relationships with women to know for sure that our main man Paul is deeply delusional and addled when it comes to understanding, and writing about, women. We've been introduced to a selfish and calculating wife, a lonely and solitary village dweller with whom he spends an evening and later discovers has murderous tendencies, a mistress who tries to suck his soul out of his body, and a psychiatrist with whom he falls insanely and desperately in love who keeps her professional cool and disappoints him beyond all reason.
But our main man Paul is most revealed, most laid bare, when it comes to how he thinks about and how he feels about women when making up that wacky story about the Queen. All his hated hopes, his desperate dreams, his naive expectations - they're all there. I'm not sure he's a man I'd particularly enjoy talking to at a dinner party. I don't trust his instincts when it comes to understanding and relating to women.
I read through to the end, wanting to know how the book, and our main man Paul's story, ended. At least as far as it got, which was to his early 50s (the real Paul Theroux is now in his seventies). He's had a varied and interesting life, and he's reflected on it with some intelligence and humour in this quasi-real and quasi-imagined look back at that life. A curious read for me, one I enjoyed immensely at times and one I found deeply dissatisfying.
May 24, 2008
I've had my face stuck in natural science, history and memoir for so long that I've practically forgotten about fiction. Why have I never read Paul Theroux? His writing is so engaging and trots along so effortlessly, I found myself reading it aloud on the bus stop bench. Another wonderful find on the free-for-the-taking shelf at the library.
As I move into this book, it just gets better. It reads like linked short stories, following the protagonist through his early writing years as a Peace Corps volunteer to London as he establishes his career. The stories/chapters are so convincing, so true, as utterly unpredictable as life. I can't believe I've deprived myself of his work for so long.
As I move into this book, it just gets better. It reads like linked short stories, following the protagonist through his early writing years as a Peace Corps volunteer to London as he establishes his career. The stories/chapters are so convincing, so true, as utterly unpredictable as life. I can't believe I've deprived myself of his work for so long.
Currently reading
January 29, 2021"85% fiction", according to Theroux.
June 17, 2013
As a frequent reader of Theroux's work, this not-quite-autobiography helped me to place his other work in context. The book is written by Paul Theroux about several episodes in the life of a fictional author named Paul Theroux. Thus we get glimpses of several events that might be libelous, criminal or scandalous if the author admitted to them outright, and perhaps we'll never know. In some cases the stories fit into timelines that he's covered in his travel writing, which is also done from a first-person perspective.
I found the book very illuminating about the day-to-day life of a writer, the difficulties, finances, loneliness, egotism, etc. Some bits of the book were depressing, some very funny, some a bit horrifying. I particularly liked the chapter where he meets the Queen of England.
I found the book very illuminating about the day-to-day life of a writer, the difficulties, finances, loneliness, egotism, etc. Some bits of the book were depressing, some very funny, some a bit horrifying. I particularly liked the chapter where he meets the Queen of England.
May 8, 2017
I found myself totally immersed in the first section about the time in the leper village as a Peace Corp volunteer. I was, of course, utterly convinced that it was autobiographical, and remain convinced about the rest of this "novel". A travel writer reveals so much about himself in other works, why not this one?
If this is not his "secret life", but rather his "other life", then this is the stuff that is no secret!
Beautifully written, whatever the truth is, with a control of language that manages to evoke the dry dustiness of African savanna, or the dripping humidity of equatorial Asia, or the brittleness of London society matrons.
If you like Theroux's travel writing, you will like this.
If this is not his "secret life", but rather his "other life", then this is the stuff that is no secret!
Beautifully written, whatever the truth is, with a control of language that manages to evoke the dry dustiness of African savanna, or the dripping humidity of equatorial Asia, or the brittleness of London society matrons.
If you like Theroux's travel writing, you will like this.
April 6, 2018
I just read this for the second time. I was endlessly entertained. Theroux is so witty so humorous so ironic without being wearisome about it. His character sketches are among the best ever, and his anecdotes. And the most entertaining part of it all? His refusal to protect himself as a character -- the character based on him, that is, because who knows how much is true and how much is fiction (a a fun house quality of his writing I admire).
October 9, 2019
Don't know what to say about this book. I loved it and, at times, hated it. I know i did not like Paul (or the character). He had the same relationship with everyone he met. He came across as a bit of a wimp and i felt like kicking him up the arse most of the way through. However, the book was so well written and descriptive that i could not stop reading it. Thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the bit where he meets himself!
November 30, 2022
Really enjoyed this book- got a real insight into a range of different environments where the story took place. The writing style also allowed one to see the complexities of the central characters thoughts and ideas. Would highly recommend.
June 1, 2016
Fantastic!
October 11, 2022
A curious alternative autobiography by the well-known travel writer. Theroux always takes us places that go beyond geographic, so his books are memorable. This one is, too.
He says himself that this is the life he may have led. I wondered how much was actual reality, just skewed a little, and how much pure fabrication. My guess is there is not a whole lot of fabrication of fundamentals. "The man is fiction, but the mask is real", says Theroux.
His other life begins with a sketch of a sketchy uncle, who shows up once or twice more later in the book. Then he moves into a stint in Moyo, an African leper colony. Paul takes with him many lessons from those who live in this permanent community. Lepers in Africa, although they can be treated and will not spread the disease, continue to be outcasts. They accept their life and their community. The community includes others who do not have leprosy but have landed there for other reasons, and is run by some kind of religious organization. Paul initially tries to teach English, but soon finds other, more or less productive activities while he quietly falls for a young woman.
The alternate Paul then lands in Singapore with a wife and children, and teaches poetry to a rich man. Sort of. He skips to London, meets "Lady Max" and his obsession with her obsession with him threatens his marriage. He moves through different cities, different women, even considers taking a part in a movie.
The life is highly readable and full of insight into a whole lot of other lives. At the same time I wonder if Theroux recognizes the jerk that he plays when it comes to women. He doesn't begin to grasp them, for all his introspection. I came away wondering if I would like or hate him if we were to meet, although I have loved his books.
He says himself that this is the life he may have led. I wondered how much was actual reality, just skewed a little, and how much pure fabrication. My guess is there is not a whole lot of fabrication of fundamentals. "The man is fiction, but the mask is real", says Theroux.
His other life begins with a sketch of a sketchy uncle, who shows up once or twice more later in the book. Then he moves into a stint in Moyo, an African leper colony. Paul takes with him many lessons from those who live in this permanent community. Lepers in Africa, although they can be treated and will not spread the disease, continue to be outcasts. They accept their life and their community. The community includes others who do not have leprosy but have landed there for other reasons, and is run by some kind of religious organization. Paul initially tries to teach English, but soon finds other, more or less productive activities while he quietly falls for a young woman.
The alternate Paul then lands in Singapore with a wife and children, and teaches poetry to a rich man. Sort of. He skips to London, meets "Lady Max" and his obsession with her obsession with him threatens his marriage. He moves through different cities, different women, even considers taking a part in a movie.
The life is highly readable and full of insight into a whole lot of other lives. At the same time I wonder if Theroux recognizes the jerk that he plays when it comes to women. He doesn't begin to grasp them, for all his introspection. I came away wondering if I would like or hate him if we were to meet, although I have loved his books.
July 19, 2024
Like its earlier companion piece, My Secret History, this is a fictional memoir. While I gave My Secret History five stars, here I found less effort from Theroux and his editor to make a coherent whole out of snippets of familiar Theroux territory: his time in Africa, Singapore, and London, as well as his marriage breakup. As such, I enjoyed some of the 19 short stories that make up this 'novel' or 'memoir' more than others. Some were too metafiction for my liking, like Paul meeting the German writer with an identical career to him. The novella at the beginning about the leper colony in Africa was the highlight and reminded me of Greene's A Burnt Out Case...which I'm sure influenced Theroux.
December 5, 2019
An "novel" by the travel writer Paul Theroux which has a character who scarily resembles an autobiographical Theroux, with liberty & license, no doubt (as he professes in the preface). Ranging across places, times, & experiences in Central Africa, Singapore, England, and Medford & Cape Cod, Theroux's stories take in a myriad of interesting characters with whom he interacts. Including Queen Elizabeth II and her peculiar husband (Duke of Edinburgh, if I'm not mistaken) at a private dinner. Some very engaging & thoughtful writing, often disparagingly so, with some wonderful levity mixed into some heartbreaking relationships & conflicts.
September 3, 2025
The book had some good chapters but most of the other chapters didn’t keep my attention. I found myself wanting to stop reading it but kept going because I’m not a quitter. I liked the Leper chapter a lot though because he actually talks about being with the culture. The other chapters were him surrounded by other writers and having everyday conversations that were not interesting in my opinion. The book felt so long and never ending. I think the fiction genres I’m used to reading are drama and dystopian so I’m used to more of a plot in the books I read and am disappointed to not find that in this book. I am 3/4 of the way done and am hoping for there to be a really good ending
August 5, 2021
I liked the first half but as it went it got... sadder and more desperate. Usually I can find Theroux being ornery somewhat charming, in the same way that it wouldn't be Larry David without the social dissection and anxiety, but portions of this especially during and after his divorce made me hope it was more fiction than memoirs.
August 23, 2018
The book takes you to so many places and introduces you to so many people in that special way only Paul Theroux can!
It also threw light on all the hard years Paul suffered over the decades losing his family.
It also threw light on all the hard years Paul suffered over the decades losing his family.
January 16, 2021
The first episodic fictional autobiography I've read. Always enjoyed Theroux and this didn't disappoint.
Much preferred the protagonist before he evolves into a bit of a self-obsessed arsehole. I think the author did too.
Much preferred the protagonist before he evolves into a bit of a self-obsessed arsehole. I think the author did too.
December 1, 2017
Enjoyed this very much!
January 9, 2020
A wonderful writer who blends genres in this biography. A marriage breakdown, insights into writing, relentless travel and hilarious interactions with a slew of characters, this is a masterful book.
May 10, 2021
He's a dick, but he sure can write.
June 7, 2021
Vond het moeizaam lezen Sommige verhalen verrassend , soms te langdraderig
September 16, 2024
Tried…couldn’t.
November 20, 2024
An interesting life, but not as good as a secret one...
July 20, 2025
A novel based on nonfiction. A good read.
Read
March 6, 2017Loved it.
February 27, 2012
I've read a great many of Paul Theroux's non-fiction travel books and have thoroughly enjoyed them all. This is the first novel of his that I've read, and I can't say I truly enjoyed it or felt a sense of resounding intellectual satisfaction when I finished it last night. I had two issues with it: the anecdotal meandering story line and the doppleganger artifice.
I like novels, whether they are literary or genre, that have a beginning, middle, and end. I want the novelist to make some points about Life, the Universe or Anything. What's my takeaway? What did you give me to think about? This work, while there is a story, is muddied by its anecdotal nature, in particular toward the end. The character Theroux, after ending his marriage, cannot write. He regains his ability to write - I think - but never says so. What did that experience mean? To me, this is a major plot element, Please don't tell me the writing or the story is "so sophisticated" that his literary or financial recovery doesn't need to be elucidated. Instead, the author Theroux goes off on a pointless wild-goose chase to get to know the guy who took up with his mistress, the woman who caused him to lose his wife. And what does he learn from the experience? Apparently nothing, because the next thing we know he's palling around with an old high school buddy - yet another anecdote that doesn't seem to have a point. And there are many more such anecdotes, for example flying to London to meet the Queen at a cocktail party or having author Anthony Burgess to dinner. Amusing, somewhat interesting as a way to while away time while reading, but to no particular point.
And so to the doppleganger artifice. Another Paul, whose last name is Auster, has mastered this form of literary posing to much greater interest and effect in "The New York Trilogy." Paul the Theroux makes a point of telling us up front that this is he himself imagined in another life, but so what? What do we care whether these things happened to the author Theroux, or the character Theroux, or neither? What if they happened to some other character named, say, John Smith?
I think the writer Theroux's use of the doppelganger artifice muddies a potentially good story for no literary or other purpose except to give a certain type of reader a titillation. What type of reader is that, you may ask? Why, the one who is incessantly asking the author of a novel if the main character is he, or if things occurring in the novel actually [sic] happened to the author. But don't get me started on that.
To end of a positive note, I did take away a great quote: “A novel is, among other things, a social history.”
I like novels, whether they are literary or genre, that have a beginning, middle, and end. I want the novelist to make some points about Life, the Universe or Anything. What's my takeaway? What did you give me to think about? This work, while there is a story, is muddied by its anecdotal nature, in particular toward the end. The character Theroux, after ending his marriage, cannot write. He regains his ability to write - I think - but never says so. What did that experience mean? To me, this is a major plot element, Please don't tell me the writing or the story is "so sophisticated" that his literary or financial recovery doesn't need to be elucidated. Instead, the author Theroux goes off on a pointless wild-goose chase to get to know the guy who took up with his mistress, the woman who caused him to lose his wife. And what does he learn from the experience? Apparently nothing, because the next thing we know he's palling around with an old high school buddy - yet another anecdote that doesn't seem to have a point. And there are many more such anecdotes, for example flying to London to meet the Queen at a cocktail party or having author Anthony Burgess to dinner. Amusing, somewhat interesting as a way to while away time while reading, but to no particular point.
And so to the doppleganger artifice. Another Paul, whose last name is Auster, has mastered this form of literary posing to much greater interest and effect in "The New York Trilogy." Paul the Theroux makes a point of telling us up front that this is he himself imagined in another life, but so what? What do we care whether these things happened to the author Theroux, or the character Theroux, or neither? What if they happened to some other character named, say, John Smith?
I think the writer Theroux's use of the doppelganger artifice muddies a potentially good story for no literary or other purpose except to give a certain type of reader a titillation. What type of reader is that, you may ask? Why, the one who is incessantly asking the author of a novel if the main character is he, or if things occurring in the novel actually [sic] happened to the author. But don't get me started on that.
To end of a positive note, I did take away a great quote: “A novel is, among other things, a social history.”
January 7, 2013
The outline of Paul Theroux's life is well known to his readers: he has always been a writer and an English teacher, born in Massachusetts and living in Africa (including a leper colony in then-Nyasaland), Singapore, England and the United States, writing novels and travel books. Here he takes the skeleton outline of his life and adds improbable adventures at each step. For example, what if when he was in Singapore, he had run across an American millionaire who was a published poet, who would have hired him to give him poetry lessons - and discovered that the millionaire was an ignorant poetaster unaware of his ignorance and lack of talent, and the only reason he was a published poet was that he gave a grant to the literary magazine that published his poems? What if he went to his hometown as an adult and met his elementary school classmates, who would inerrantly confuse him with Henry David Thoreau?
There are many writers such that I really like some of their work, and cannot stomach the rest. I love J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun and his short story "Thirteen for Centaurus", but his antifeminist and antiecological novel (whose title I cannot recall at the moment, and it doesn't matter anyway) I couldn't finish. My Other Life is in the latter category. I've probably read a half dozen of Theroux's books, but have only kept O-Zone and The Mosquito Coast. A writer is just not a very interesting occupation, and a self-indulgent 50-year-old is not a pretty sight.
The first long chapter, about young Paul Theroux teaching English to lepers in Nyasaland, was printed in Granta magazine some years ago, which is where I'd read it. I was reminded of it by Theroux's recent New York Times editorial about Malawi (which is what Nyasaland is now called) and "the rock star's burden".
There are many writers such that I really like some of their work, and cannot stomach the rest. I love J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun and his short story "Thirteen for Centaurus", but his antifeminist and antiecological novel (whose title I cannot recall at the moment, and it doesn't matter anyway) I couldn't finish. My Other Life is in the latter category. I've probably read a half dozen of Theroux's books, but have only kept O-Zone and The Mosquito Coast. A writer is just not a very interesting occupation, and a self-indulgent 50-year-old is not a pretty sight.
The first long chapter, about young Paul Theroux teaching English to lepers in Nyasaland, was printed in Granta magazine some years ago, which is where I'd read it. I was reminded of it by Theroux's recent New York Times editorial about Malawi (which is what Nyasaland is now called) and "the rock star's burden".
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