10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
London Embassy, April 24, 2006
Paul Theroux is probably best known as a travel writer and the author/creator of such films as "The Mosquito Coast" and "Half Moon Street." First person narrative of an American foreign service official who has been posted to London. A biting, sarcastic, and satirical series of stories.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun in the foreign service, March 22, 2006
While written in 1983, this book is not at all dated. Paul Theroux invents a collection of bizarre characters associated in some way with an Anerican foreign service officer serving in the American embassy in London. The stories are hilarious, satiric, or touching. Theroux is a great author.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A minor US diplomat is posted to London, March 8, 2010
This is a book that has gone out of print. Secondhand it is available for as little as 0.01 euro. Brrr.
Paul Theroux (PT)'s The London Embassy (TLE) is a collection of 18 interconnected short stories, almost a novel, describing Spencer Savage (SS), formerly US Consul in a Malaysian backwater in his new role as Political Officer in the US embassy in London. Unlike the stories in "The Consul's File" about his Asian dealings and encounters with spirits and real people, none of SS's adventures in TLE have been previously published in magazines or literary journals. Six years separate the two books. For PT, TLE has probably been a slow work in progress, while researching and writing real travels books and substantial novels.
In the London embassy SS is a PO-1 (the PO-2's are spooks) and his responsibilities are many but ill-defined. SS is an excellent observer and resourceful operator, who has to deal with awkward issues within and beyond the walls of the embassy. Having spent so much time in Africa and Asia, SS's initial reaction to London is pure awe: where else in the world can one walk for miles in a metropolis without stumbling on a slum? TLE contains good, great and lesser stories. A constant factor is PT's eye and ear for situations and dialogue, his nose for atmosphere and smells, and his talent to describe and let people talk.
Paul Theroux (PT)is an impossibly productive and versatile author who has long been a role model for thousands of more sedentary, now greying males, and perhaps some females too: he joined and left the Peace Corps in his twenties. He subsequently entered and left the garden of academia to embark on travelling and writing novels. He has been producing books and journalistic work about every country he lived in or passed through until this day. And who does not like his son Louis, a charismatic underdog TV documentary maker/interpreter of the soul of the United States?
Unless I am wrong, TLE is the only book where PT granted a comeback to an earlier book's hero. More recently, PT successfully re-applied the format of interlinked stories becoming a novel in "Hotel Honolulu.
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