Customer Reviews

Blinding Light

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have been a Theroux reader for a couple of years. When I saw the book I grabbed it. The plot sounded a little odd. I was not sure that I would like it, but I took the chance. I was not disappointed.

A couple of pages in I was hooked. The book starts off with a journey taken incognito by Steadman, a famous but

"has-been" author. The descriptions of his fellow travellers are spot on, particularly the boastful Californians and Janey, the Brit.

Steadman, the narrator and central character, voluntarily descends into darkness, first geographically, then literally and erotically. One wonders, as with some of Theroux's other work, how close it is to real experience.

At times Steadman, who oftens listens and observes, but rarely speaks, is accused of being voyreuristic. As the reader it almost feels like you are in the bedroom with Steadman and Ava. You feel like Steadman - the voyeur.

I read the book in two days. It was difficult to put down.

The only disappointing part of the book was that Part 6, which has to cover a fair bit of ground, was only 6 pages long and Part 5 dragged a little.

A highly original and wonderful story.

In "Blinding Light," Slade Steadman has lived the life of a wealthy recluse on Martha's Vineyard from the income generated from his phenomenally successful book "Trespassing." In the twenty years since the publication of this travelogue about traveling without benefit of a passport, he has not been able to write another book. He decides to take a drug tour to the Ecuadorian jungle in the hopes that this will inspire him to create the novel he is meant to write. The drug he takes there, known as datura, or the tiger's blindfold, simultaneously provides blindness and extraordinary clarity of inner vision. He smuggles the drug back into the States and uses it for controlled blindness in order to gain heightened awareness and insight into his past so that he can write a semiautobiographical novel. He becomes addicted to it as he dictates his novel to his lover Ava.

Steadman then comes out of seclusion to attend social functions and to go on a book tour, while pretending that his blindness is permanent rather than temporarily drug-induced. Eventually, however, the drug no longer works in a predictable way. His visionary blindness begins to give way to a much darker blindness while the secret of his success is in danger of disclosure. The character of Steadman is an interesting one. Acting the clairvoyant blind man, he swaggers, mind reads, brags of his omniscience, and impresses everyone up to and including President Clinton. He is an antihero as egotistical and colorful as Paul Theroux's Allie Fox, and is destined for as hard a fall.

This story is full of metaphor and symbolism. There are sleep masks, blindfolds, festival masks, and blind people. There are constant references to light and darkness, awareness and ignorance, sight and blindness. The best scenes are those in the Ecuadorian jungle, and they are reminiscent of Theroux's "The Mosquito Coast." The most tedious are those in Steadman's house as he dictates the erotic scenes for his novel and acts them out with Ava. These sexual narratives and flashbacks are overwrought and add little to the story. If they had been trimmed back considerably, I would have rated the book five stars instead of four.

Eileen Rieback

I've been a Paul Theroux fan for almost 20 years now (the first book of his I read was HALF MOON STREET in 1986, and what few I haven't read, I just haven't got to yet but will), and I believe that BLINDING LIGHT is one of his best.

Everything I love about his writing is here: exotic (but at times painfully uncomfortable) travel, garish and obnoxious characters, graphic but intimate sexual episodes and power plays (against the backdrop of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, no less!). And, since this is fiction, Theroux can weave a mysterious drug into the plot that is fantastic and fascinating.

The novel has such an authentic feel that, from reading Theroux's other works, I wondered how much of it actually happened. The opening travel chapters felt like his nonfiction travel books. I can easily see Theroux, who grew up and (as far as I know) maintained a residence in New England, appearing at high-powered celebrity parties at Martha's Vineyard. He even makes a brief mention of growing up at a swimming pool. The added interest in his works, for me, has always been to wonder whether "this really happened" or not.

BLINDING LIGHT is one of his best.

This is the Theroux novel I have waited years for. The reader shares his frustration at being appreciated primarily as a travel writer, a role more documentarian than creative. Thinly-veiled characters and places add intrigue to the storyline, but the main attraction in this novel is Theroux's keen powers of observation and his candid commentary on the places and characters he encounters therein. The first segment of the book, the drug trip, becomes frustrating and tiresome, just as the trip is to the characters. Then it takes off to places we've all wanted to go, but were afraid to do more than hover at the edge of. Theroux has proven himself as a master of the novel and he has improved with age, a concept and inevitable outcome that he will always be at loggerheads with.

No one else has mentioned that this is a retelling of the Faust legend, so I thought I'd add this note.

The story had me completely absorbed. So much so that I felt used up after reading it. It rang true with me emotionally and afterwards I guess I was a bit frightened that I was so absorbed in this character who was, after all, making a deal with the devil.

However, most retellings of the Faust story do sympathize with the soul that wants more than we're normally allotted in this life.

I too have been a fan of Theroux for a long time. This book, however, was a major disappointment. Another reviewer had it right when they said it was a poorly written porno novel. No thank you, and his depiction of the doctor character, even though she does deal him a bit of his own "medicine" at the end, is flat and misogynistic.

While I enjoy Theroux's ascerbic travel commentaries, I have always had more problems with his novels, and that is certainly true of his latest effort.

The whole plot is quite contrived and from the moment that the narrator starts experimenting with datura the end result is pretty predictable.

There are some interesting set-pieces, including some very perceptive encounters with Bill Clinton (never actually identified in the novel)but in between those entertaining passages I found myself flipping pages of material that had simply become boring and repetitive.

I found his main female companion, a doctor no less! was simply a cypher who seemed to play along with all of the narrator's sexual fantasies, no matter how infantile. At times I wanted to shake her but then reminded myself that she was just a figment of the narrator's ( author's) overwrought sexual passions, including what can only be described as an obsession with oral sex.

At no point in the novel was I ever persuaded that the narrator had gained any insights from his consumption of the drug. Towards the end I rushed to finish it and ultimately was left with an empty, unsatisfied feeling.

Theroux? There's nothing wrong with being a travel writer...please stop trying to be something else.

I've been a huge fan of some of Theroux's books. This one was vintage Theroux, but in all the wrong ways. The sex scenes read like Penthouse letters to the editor, and there are so many of them that it was like traveling in the company of a dirty old man.

The premise, of an author accepting the risk of blindness if it will re-start his creativity, is a good one, but it doesn't quite work out. Comparing this book against previous Theroux books, I realize, is kind of unfair. After all, the protagonist in this one is an author trying to escape always being known for one famed, long-ago work. Still, I couldn't help it.

I read most Thoreaux novels for the travel writing; he is an expert in the field and has successfully mixed travel with other topics to great success. I started Blinding Light with great expectations for the same--and was not disappointed. But 2/3 of the way through I finally had to put it down. The sex, although well-written and at times graphic, became the stuff of adolescent fantasy. Not to say it was bad, but it took up far too much space and was just not necessary.

I am not a sex-snob by any means, and feel sex of any kind is a welcome part of good fiction (but not sex for sex sake). But Mr. Thoreaux takes things a bit too far this time around. When I sit down with a book, I like each sitting to bring a new setting/situation into play and this just did not happen.

I've only just picked up BLINDING LIGHT so am conscious I have little original to say buT I am squarely with those who think that Theroux must have been competing for the annual bad sex award. The descriptions are embrassingly absurd but, more important, unnecessary. After 50 pages I had had enough of it and was struck by the absence of any likeable characters. This was my first Theroux novel and I can't belive his reputation is built on stuff like this .. "blinding light", hardly the most creative pun given the plot's predictable development.