Jim's Reviews > The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro

Bought in Heathrow airport, I was hoping that this would be somewhere near as gripping as the Roald Dahl I couldn't find. Theroux's fiction can be a bit of a let-down (Saint Jack, Chicago Loop) or intensely entertaining (My Secret History, The Mosquito Coast) but it is almost always worth reading. This novella had its points to put about truth and beauty, not to mention sex and death, but Theroux is not as bitter and vicious as he once was. I felt that he wanted to be as vile as he could in the story, but drew back from the worst excesses his prose could describe. The self-loathing and cruelty of all the characters was underneath the surface and remained unexposed upon a rock that the author didn't want to look under, although he occasionally shot a glance in that direction. It left me feeling unsatisfied, as Theroux is at his best in the unbridled loathing of his own creations, and this book could have gone further in exploring the themes of age, loneliness, sex and relationships from his twisted and bitter viewpoint. As I've noted before, Theroux is increasingly looking on the bright side of life, and that's not what we pay him for!