The New Confessions
by William Boyd
Buy on AmazonIn this extraordinary novel, William Boyd presents the autobiography of John James Todd, whose uncanny and exhilarating life as one of the most unappreciated geniuses of the twentieth century is equal parts Laurence Stern, Charles Dickens, Robertson Davies, and Saul Bellow, and a hundred percent William Boyd. From his birth in 1899, Todd was doomed. Emerging from his angst-filled childhood, he rushes into the throes of the twentieth century on the Western Front during the Great War, and quickly changes his role on the battlefield from cannon fodder to cameraman. When he becomes a prisoner of war, he discovers Rousseau's Confessions, and dedicates his life to bringing the memoir to the silver screen.…
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"The New Confessions was the first hard-backed book I bought with my own money, and it showed me that serious-looking books could actually be fun and entertaining. “I never ‘tell’ a joke, but I’m always alert for ironies; unexpected outcomes; unmet expectations” Boyd’s humour is quite like my own, particularly on show in the scene in which a young man travels to London to declare his love for an older woman, only when he rings her doorbell in order to propose, he finds she’s with her husband, whereupon he panics, and tells her he is come to London to enlist. Cue four years in the army, and the battle of the Somme."
The Funniest Historical Novels · fivebooks.com