My Secret History
by Paul Theroux | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0399134247 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0399134247 Global Overview for this book
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
3 journalers for this copy...
Picked up at the Book Thing, for BC.
From the cover -
Andre Parent is an American writer and this large and populous novel is about his life and his secrets - his dreams, his privacies, everything that he keeps hidden. He tells us that it is his secrets which made him a writer, and that his double life offered him a fascinating variety of subjects.
Reviewing his "secret" past in an attempt to resolve his present romantic contradictions, Andre, like the traveler he is, captures with disarming candor those amorous way stations - some funny, some heartbreaking - that have led him to his current impasse. As an adolescent altar boy and also an urgent lover, his first experience with death is his coming of age as well as a prologue to his struggles at nineteen to please an older girlfriend and his middle-aged patroness while at the same time holding down a job as a lifeguard at an Armenian country club outside Boston. The results are bittersweet.
Teaching in Africa, living in London and coping in Siberia are described as Andre's life enfolds, and life is never simple for him. His secrets are nearly always at odds with his job, his marriage, his outward respectability. With his luck, humor and imagination, he prevails rather than merely survives. In one sense he is a huge success. At the end he has, as he says, "two of everything," and he takes the consequences.
Moving with exceptional vitality through the decades and around the globe, written with the casual brilliance that is Theroux's trademark, My Secret History is both witty and emotionally charged, dramatically human and delightfully frank. My Secret History is Paul Theroux's most ambitious - and most enticing - novel. A superb mixture of pathos, comedy and sexual love.
From the cover -
Andre Parent is an American writer and this large and populous novel is about his life and his secrets - his dreams, his privacies, everything that he keeps hidden. He tells us that it is his secrets which made him a writer, and that his double life offered him a fascinating variety of subjects.
Reviewing his "secret" past in an attempt to resolve his present romantic contradictions, Andre, like the traveler he is, captures with disarming candor those amorous way stations - some funny, some heartbreaking - that have led him to his current impasse. As an adolescent altar boy and also an urgent lover, his first experience with death is his coming of age as well as a prologue to his struggles at nineteen to please an older girlfriend and his middle-aged patroness while at the same time holding down a job as a lifeguard at an Armenian country club outside Boston. The results are bittersweet.
Teaching in Africa, living in London and coping in Siberia are described as Andre's life enfolds, and life is never simple for him. His secrets are nearly always at odds with his job, his marriage, his outward respectability. With his luck, humor and imagination, he prevails rather than merely survives. In one sense he is a huge success. At the end he has, as he says, "two of everything," and he takes the consequences.
Moving with exceptional vitality through the decades and around the globe, written with the casual brilliance that is Theroux's trademark, My Secret History is both witty and emotionally charged, dramatically human and delightfully frank. My Secret History is Paul Theroux's most ambitious - and most enticing - novel. A superb mixture of pathos, comedy and sexual love.
Sadly, MaryZee passed suddenly in September 2012. MaryZee's daughter is now ready to rehome her mom's books and I was willing to collect and redistribute them to keep her literary legacy alive.
In memory of MaryZee, I hope this book will continue to travel and find many eager readers. Thank you, 6of8, for bringing me this and other books Of MaryZee's to share.
Journal Entry 4 by 
SqueakyChu
at LFL - Vandegrift Ave (5811) (#7720) in Rockville, Maryland USA on Wednesday, July 15, 2020
SqueakyChu at LFL - Vandegrift Ave (5811) (#7720) in Rockville, Maryland USA on Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Released 3 yrs ago (7/15/2020 UTC) at LFL - Vandegrift Ave (5811) (#7720) in Rockville, Maryland USA
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
I'm releasing this book in memory of MaryZee for...
***The July 2020 Septad Release Challenge hosted by hyphen8.
------------------------------------
Hello and welcome to BookCrossing ... where we make the whole world a library!
Now that you've "caught" this book, it is yours to do with as you like. Read it, keep it, or give it away. It's your choice!
I'd love if you'd enter a note here on BookCrossing about this book -- where you found it, how you like it, and/or where you release it. If you join BookCrossing (free and fun), kindly list me, SqueakyChu. or any other journaler on this thread as your referring person. Thank you so much.
Enjoy the book!
***The July 2020 Septad Release Challenge hosted by hyphen8.
------------------------------------
Hello and welcome to BookCrossing ... where we make the whole world a library!
Now that you've "caught" this book, it is yours to do with as you like. Read it, keep it, or give it away. It's your choice!
I'd love if you'd enter a note here on BookCrossing about this book -- where you found it, how you like it, and/or where you release it. If you join BookCrossing (free and fun), kindly list me, SqueakyChu. or any other journaler on this thread as your referring person. Thank you so much.
Enjoy the book!
