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The Destiny of Nathalie "X

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These dense, finely etched stories are my introduction to William Boyd. Such an ordinary name for such a fancy writer! The title story is set in a place I know well near LAX; indeed I can almost see the exact setting of most of the scenes, where a French director, a black auteur, as it were, is composing his film. The setting is purposely banal in the extreme: a cheap pizzeria next to a nondescript motel within litter distance of the airport, chosen instinctively to comment on the low culture of America, I suppose, when all of Hollywood and Bel Air, West L.A. and Brentwood, avec filmdom execs, etc., beckons just beyond. This is explained by understanding that "He's an artist, he don't look back," to re-gender a Bob Dylan lyric, as Boyd does on page 11.

The second story, "Transfigured Night," set in Austria and Poland during the first world war, is somewhat Kafkaesque and not typical of this collection. The third story, "Hôtel des Voyageurs," begins in Paris and is rendered in a self-revelatory first person narrative that is the book's signature technique (although this is just a warm up to the near-perfection of "Alpes-Maritimes" and "The Persistence of Vision" in which Boyd's narrators give themselves away completely, much to the reader's amusement). One might call "Hôtel des Voyageurs," a one-night stand (actually afternoon) for sophisticates in which a euro trash girl plays a Comtesse that the narrator coyly, in the British manner, brags about bedding. This inadvertent self-revelation by the first person narrator is a technique that Boyd has worked to perfection.

The next story, "Never Saw Brazil" continues the cosmopolitan, polyglot exposition. Boyd seems to know several European languages and is not shy about sparkling his text with italicized dialogue in a number of tongues including Portuguese. He is also very big on food and presents a variable cookbook of dishes throughout. The story, "Lunch," is almost a toast to gastronomy.

"The Dream Lover" and the aforementioned "Alpes-Maritimes" are set in the south of France and concentrate on love and self-discovery among twenty-something expats expressed with irony, delicacy and a kind of ultra sophistication much envied, I understand, by assistant editors at Elle and The New Yorker. (Probably also at Granta, where four of these stories first appeared.)

In "Cork" Boyd presents a female narrator who has a love affair with a strange but touching man who was once in her employ in Portugal harvesting and selling cork. Here the narrator seems reliable and self-aware.

The final story, "Loose Continuity" begins in 1945 at the corner of Westwood and Wilshire near UCLA were I went to school while flashing back to Germany in the twenties as the female narrator, Gudrun, recalls a lost love as she watches the workmen finish her café design.

Boyd use of language is innovative and, at times, startling. Some examples:

The narrator in "The Dream Lover," as he ascends to the roof of an apartment building: "To my vague alarm there is a small swimming pool up here and a large glassed-in cabana....."

In "Alpes-Maritimes" Boyd's narrator (who wants the twin sisters for himself alone) reflects on the intrusion of Steve, now with them, "The trio becomes a banal foursome, or--even worse--two couples."

The dilettante artist in "The Persistence of Vision" reveals himself with this statement about his infant son: "I found it hard to paint in the house now that its routines revolved around Dominic's noisy needs rather than my own."

On the next page, after noticing somebody out of the corner of his eye, the narrator remarks, "...[Y]our instinctive apprehension is often more sure and certain than something studied and sought for: the glance is often more accurate than the stare."

In a bit of unconscious self-projection (and foreshadowed irony) on page 134, the narrator remarks on the man who will later, unbeknownst to him, abscond with his wife, "I felt sad for him, with his pointless wealth and the cheerless luxury of his life...."

Sometimes one is forced to turn to the dictionary to understand exactly what Boyd has in mind. In "Cork" Lily's lover has sent her an invitation for a rendezvous including these instructions: "...[P]lease do not depilate yourself--anywhere."

Boyd's style is precise, measured, polished, erudite, a trifle showy, and very sensitive. He has a sharp eye for fashionable detail and any sort of pretension. He stays off to the side himself, but maintains the sort of iron control over his characters, especially his leading narrators, that Nabokov insisted on. He delves into the human condition with tiny needles like an acupuncturist or a miniaturist with a magnifying glass. He is an extraordinary writer, original in technique, subtle in resolution with witty and ironic overtones. His control of voice and tone bespeaks a man who has mastered several languages and many of the nuances of human psychology. He is also a writer that other writers can learn from.

Can't say enough good about Wm. Boyd: he is hilarious, erudite, humane, urbane, witty, twisted, clever, poetic, "relatable"--everything you want in a novelist and storyteller. On a par with the great Kingsley Amis and V.S. Naipaul. Read him.

'The Destiny of Nathalie X' was a total disappointment for me. I have read perhaps a half dozen novels by William Boyd and found them to be either very good or great. He is a brilliant storyteller. But this collection of short stories seem to have been written by someone else, or perhaps by a William Boyd before he reached manhood. Regardless, they are all trite and confused. I suspect the problem has to do with the format. Specifically, short stories don't provide this talented write enough runway to allow is talents to be fully expressed. Instead we are left with dribble.


Bottom line: not recommended for anyone, especially William Boyd fans.

I read this collection of eleven short stories (all previously published in various periodicals) in preparation for an interview I was to do with the author, who is also a screenwriter, for Creative Screenwriting,magazine otherwise, I would not have picked it up. As it was, I found little to hold my attention, and I skipped past many a story after reading half. Not my cuppa tea... Boyd's novels, on the other hand, are extremely good, especially The Blue Afternoon.

Can't say enough good about Wm. Boyd: he is hilarious, erudite, humane, urbane, witty, twisted, clever, poetic, "relatable"--everything you want in a novelist and storyteller. On a par with the great Kingsley Amis and V.S. Naipaul. Read him.