Customer Reviews

The London Embassy

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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.

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.

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.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed this little book, first read on a plane from Miami to London way back in 1985 or so. I was living in London then, as sometime around then too, was the author. His descriptions of both London and the English and their lifestyles ring very true, and this is an enjoyable scramble through relationships - including that of the "hero" of the story - set in the USA Embassy in London during the time of Margaret Thatcher's "Iron Lady" rule.

Sometimes the writing is as grumpy and belligerent as Theroux himself sometimes is, but it is constantly witty and surprising ... as the author always is! The book is made up of 18 chapters that form short-stories in themselves, and each usually explores a different character (usually eccentric) or aspect of the life of a FSO - 4, Political Officer, working in the American Embassy in London. (" ... this was also a promotion for me .. from FSO-5, as a Consular Officer to FSO-4, political Officer. My designation was POL-1,not to be confused with POL-2, the CIA .. I was only a spy in the most general and harmless sense of the word". Having some limited experience of Embassies and Foreign Service officers I found the descriptions of the various roles and tasks - as well as the actual characters of the Embassy officers - very sound and believable.

Strangely, given the published date and the chosen period Theroux set his book in, it is not `dated' in any of the functions, attitudes or characters who people his stories.

A great - if short - read.

I agree with the others' assessment that this is a sharp, well-written set of stories - "almost a novel." Remarkable cast of characters, excellently delineated. Theroux has a keen eye for the vagaries of British social interchange, but I was surprised by the amount of overt hostility his characters vent on each other - the put-down as an art form. Catches the racism and ignorance still to be found today (though the US is no better in this respect.)

The women are a quirky bunch: the one who seemed ready to have a long-term affair with him, helped him find a flat, then was furious when he wouldn't pay her commission on the lease: the one who lived alone but bought vast quantities of meat,fish, and chicken...but then finally there is the one where it all works out, from love at first sight onwards.

Although Theroux grew up in Massachusetts and has spent a lot of time in England, American modes of thinking and writing are dominant. In one place he writes something that makes no sense to a Brit: an American poet was reported to have said that he had "lost the balance of his mind." Theroux "liked "lost the balance" very much, as if he lost the little that remained and had none left." This works in the US where the word "balance" is used to mean "remainder" "the rest". A radio announcer may say " and for the balance of the hour, we'll hear..." Not so in England, where it strictly refers to equilibrium. A term often used for suicides was "while the balance of his mind was disturbed." By suggesting that it was not a rational act, limits on religious ceremony etc. could be avoided.)

Enjoyable read.