The New Confessions (Paperback)

by William Boyd (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
"John James Todd, the tenacious, reflective, wise, ambitious, romantic filmmaker and adventurer who is the narrator of Boyd's fourth novel, is not a real person--except that Boyd delightfully makes him so in this ribald 'autobiography' based in spirit on Rousseau's Confessions ," said PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
$18.95. f Early in life John James Todd, forgotten hero of the cinematic avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, is advised, "Make your own rut. It's the only way." Throughout a long and tempestuous life, Todd remains true to his artistic vision, from his first movies of the Great War to the last B-westerns 30 years later. The capstone of his career is a five-hour, three-screen version of Rousseau's Confessions ; it appears just as talkies arrive on the scene, eliminating the audience for his one undiluted masterpiece. Vain and impulsive, undisciplined in all save his work, Todd is spiritual heir to his beloved JeanJacques. Better than either the prize-winning A Good Man in Africa ( LJ 5/1/82) or An Ice Cream War ( LJ 4/15/83), this novel shows Boyd's considerable ability as storyteller and the rich comic sense that infuses his work with life. David Keymer, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Utica
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage International ed edition (October 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375705031
• ISBN-13: 978-0375705038
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #158,994 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars another sweeping saga by Boyd fully entertains.., September 18, 2005

By	lazza (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The New Confessions (Paperback)

William Boyd is a terrific storyteller. His prose is of high quality, characterizations livid and entertaining. I'm glad to say 'The New Confessions' is standard William Boyd material. It is a faux autobiography of a Scotsman as he reminisces through his full life of the first three quarters of the twentieth century. He experiences the horror of trench warfare in WW I, he becomes a famous silent film director of the Germany avant-garde cinema, and then lives several years in turbulent Hollywood before retiring on an island in the Mediterranian. He is no hero, and not a particularly nice guy. But is life story is very rich; I wish I had a grandfather like him!

However 'The New Confessions is not perfect. The ending is a bit of a disappointment, and overall the book seems too much like his 'Any Human Heart' (..which he wrote later but I read earlier). I do wish William Boyd would return to the stellar form he demonstrated with 'Brazzaville Beach', a less ambitious but much more powerful novel.


Bottom line: thoroughly competent but Boyd can do better. Still, any average effort by Boyd is worthy read.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Outstanding Fictional Memoir, December 24, 2003

By	A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This fictional memoir displays Boyd's consummate skill and style to full effect, ranging across time an place to create a vivid tale. Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions is (perhaps arguably) first tell-all memoir, and here Boyd updates it through the reminisces of James Todd. The story unfolds chronologically from his birth in 1899 and upbringing in Edinburgh to the 1970s, when he sits incognito on a quiet island writing his memoirs. The years between are a picaresque journey through the first half of the last century and one man's attempt to create meaning in his life.

The early years in his domineering father's household document an unhappy child yearning for love and approval. His father's quest to perfect and patent medicines provides an uncommonly interesting background for this. When a family friend introduces him to photography, the die is cast. As a teenager, like so many British men of his age, he is swallowed by the first World War, where he is wounded at Ypres. Here, Boyd's descriptions manage to breath fresh life into carnage whose horror has been well-documented. Fortuitously, he is then transferred to a propaganda unit, where his talent in photography is applied to the new realm of film. Captured by the Germans, he languishes in prison, where a guard befriends him and gives him a copy of Rousseau's Confessions to pass the time. The work insinuates itself into him, and it percolates in him in the postwar years as he works in the London silent film industry. Despite marrying and fathering several children, his ambitions remain thwarted and he moves to Berlin to pursue his pet project of making an epic version of Rousseau's book.

In Weimar Berlin he embraces the vibrant (if pfenningless) art community and reconnects with his former guard, who is now an actor. Working together, and with Armenian producers, their careers start to take off and Todd becomes embroiled in a lifelong love affair with an actress. Boyd's description of the inter-war Berlin film scene is so vivid, and the discussion of Todd's career so convincing that one is tempted to put the book down and rush to the video store to see his films. With the juice to get his pet Rousseau project made, Todd throws himself full-tilt into the project, only to see the emergence of "talkies" scuttle it. This propels him to Hollywood, where makes some quiet B-Westerns embedded with subtle social messages until t he next war finds him scrambling around as a war correspondent for third-tier U.S. newspapers.

Following WWII, he falls afoul of the McCarthy witch hunts for communist in the entertainment industry and appears before HUAC. Here, is perhaps the book's one flaw. The HUAC hearings provide Todd with an opportunity to both stay afloat by naming names (some of whom have already named him), and exact revenge on his longtime archnemesis-but he doesn't take it. Although he's presented as variously idealistic and honorable, it's the one time in the book where the character doesn't hold true. And from here, the book bogs down a little, as Todd's current situation as apparent exile starts to loom over the proceedings. Despite a somewhat unsatisiying ending, the story's overall quality is head and shoulders above the pack. Once again Boyd has researched a plethora of subjects and places, and recreates them perfectly. At the same time he occasionally deploys a light comic touch to lighten this story of the search for meaning and the role of chance in life.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a very different opinion, November 23, 2007

By	Bill Hansen "Bill Hansen" (Ithaca NY, USA) - See all my reviews

I'm a great admirer of Willian Boyd, a person who has enjoyed his earlier novels. I was really looking forward to reading "The New Confessions". I started it and I persisted through the first 100 pages or so, but I couldn't finish it - a very rare way for me to treat a book. But the protagonist of "Confessions" is such a bitter misanthropic voice that the book was spoiled for me.

I urge those who haven't yet read any Boyd to begin with one of his books of shorter fiction, or best of all, with "Brazzaville Beach", one of the best novels I've read in years. Then follow up with "Restless", another excellent and innovative book.

Perhaps after those two, if you're as disenchanted with "Confessions" as I was, you'll still read Boyd's next work. Had this been my first exposure to him, it might have been my last.