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My Secret History
My Secret History
Author: Paul Theroux
MY SECRET HISTORY is Paul Theroux's tour de force. It is the story of Andre Parent, a writer, a world traveler, a lover of every kind of woman he chances to meet in a life as varied as a man can lead. From his days as an altar boy, to his job as a teenaged lifeguard, and then as a youth caught between the attentions of a beautiful young stud...  more »
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ISBN-13: 9780804105149
ISBN-10: 0804105146
Publication Date: 2/28/1990
Pages: 444
Rating:
  • Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
 6

4.1 stars, based on 6 ratings
Publisher: Ivy Books
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

SutterTom avatar reviewed My Secret History on + 191 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
Obsessed from his youth with the pleasures of a double life: one public, proper & successful, the other secret, dangerous & decadent; a successful writer & world traveler meets and marries the woman that causes him to truly examine himself and his motivations. But now he must confront the problem of ending his secret life without destroying his public one. Theroux confronts the foolishness of men and celebrates the wisdom of women.
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reviewed My Secret History on + 88 more book reviews
From an early adolescence torn between a call to the priesthood and the call of the flesh, through late-adolescent sexual initiation and a young adult's escapades as a teacher in Africa, to a grown man's crisis in marriage, Theroux recounts the "secret history" of Andy Parent, a writer suspiciously resembling Theroux himself. That the purpose is to show a man "writing for his life," his fragmented self so healed by making "something new of his experience" that his work is seen metaphorically as "going home," is not apparent until the final pages, and though these pages dazzle they hardly seem novelistic. For the reader, Andy's impulse to write is buried in the unending description of his numerous liaisons--there is enough sexual endeavor here to bore the most prurient among us. Indeed, his comment, "My being inarticulate was probably the reason I had become a writer," serves to highlight Theroux's own failure to articulate the connections between Andy's early life and later self-discovery as a writer. A tantalizing novel whose occasional power suggests how much better it could have been.


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