The Family Arsenal [Mass Market Paperback]

Paul Theroux (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 1977

Hood, a renegade American diplomat, envisions a new urban order through the opium fog of his room. His sometimes bedmate, Mayo, has stolen a Flemish painting and is negotiating for publicity with The Times. Meanwhile, Murf the bomb-maker leaves his mark in red whilst his girlfriend Brodie bombs Euston ...Set in the grimy decay of south-east London, "The Family Arsenal" is a chilling novel of violence in the tradition of Brighton Rock.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1941 and published his first novel, Waldo, in 1967. His subsequent novels include The Family Arsenal, Picture Palace, The Mosquito Coast, O-Zone, Millroy the Magician, My Secret History, My Other Life, and Kowloon Tong. His highly acclaimed travel books include Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, Fresh Air Fiend, and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. He divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian Islands, where he is a professional beekeeper. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (September 12, 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345257510
• ISBN-13: 978-0345257512
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,677,371 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Paul Theroux's highly acclaimed novels include Blinding Light, Hotel Honolulu, My Other Life, Kowloon Tong, and The Mosquito Coast. His renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Dark Star Safari, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, and The Happy Isles of Oceania. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From the dark side of life..., April 13, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Orlando) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Family Arsenal (Mass Market Paperback)

Theroux has always been an unflinching narrator on human nature. With a novel like Mosquito Coast he gave you a look at the mind of a genius and his estrangement to materialism. With The Family Arsenal, Theroux gives you a look at the close knit troubles of family life in the slums of London, and the frightening results of sudden violence that can arrupt at any moment. A haunting portrait of a society on the downward trend towards hell on earth.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Oliver Twist meets Blow Up meets the Quiet American, November 27, 2010

By 

Lars Ericson (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Family Arsenal (Mass Market Paperback)

Charles Dicken's grim London is mashed up with Antonioni's mod London and Graham Greene's moody tone in this tale of a young American Foreign Service dropout escaping the United States-Viet Nam war who crashes in a London slum with a small band of half-hearted hipster/Irish revolutionaries.

His depictions of London are vivid and I found myself checking Wikipedia to compare his descriptions of each neighborhood against the reality, and I found that even with the passage of 35 years, his descriptions hold true. This is evidence of Theroux's keen eye as a travel writer.

The tone is an attempt at both moody sentimentality and social satire.

One sees the author modelling himself as a resourceful tough guy in the hero.

Other than the hero, the characters and situations are drawn somewhat thinly. Depictions of sexual longing and sexual situations in general seem most well-drawn and realistic.

The whole story doesn't quite hold together. 5 or 6 characters are drawn together from different parts of London in an excessive amount of meet-cute.

The denouement is rather tidy.

I won't describe the whole plot out of respect for Theroux initiates who will enjoy the writing on a page-by-page basis, as I did, without necessarily admiring the whole.

Also be warned that there are pages of flights of fancy every 10 pages or so that are somewhat tedious to plow through.

The author is at his best in depicting sexual situations and action situations. The passages depicting character's inner motivations are generally rather tedious, and many character stereotypes are invoked.

The politics of the novel are not the main driving force of the story, which is character driven. While the scaffolding has a lot of politics in it, overall the politics are completely irrelevant, because the story is centrally about the feelings and sense of isolation of the main character.

The novel was written in 1975, when the author was 34 or so, and this relative youth may account for some of the stereotyping and the thin-ness of the characters.

Not a bad read but he's done better and is at his best in his travel writing and when he is more directly writing about versions of himself. This is because the author is a reflective and entertaining narcissist and so writes more deeply when he is writing directly about himself.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping Tale of London's Poor Laced With Violence, March 13, 2003

By 

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Family Arsenal (Mass Market Paperback)

Without question, Paul Theroux has been among our most astute observers of human nature writing in the English language. In "The Family Arsenal", a terse, compelling look at crime in London's slums, Paul Theroux takes an unflinching, often brutal, look at the interplay between adverse poverty and crime. Furthermore he adds to this compelling mixture an intriguing look at IRA terrorism being waged on the streets of London. All of this is told through vivid, well-crafted prose. Fans of Paul Theroux's work will not be disappointed with his latest fictional excursion into an abyss of contemporary Western society.