The New Confessions

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.


Definitely destined to be a classic!   October 18, 2000
Bea Quinn (Manila, Philippines)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

For the life of me, I will never ever forget the first and last sentences of this book, the slightly-damaged hardbound edition of which I bought for only a dollar(!) in a discount section of a bookstore here in Manila in 1994! A rare, serendipitous literary find for me, indeed. Truly captivating, a biography like this of one John James Todd can only be created by one destined to be a world literary giant. Medicine, Mathematics, Philosophy, 20th Century History, Cinema -- all combined and meticulously woven in one great book of insights. It is as if every turn of a page of this book, a hologram appears and all you have to do is watch, laugh and weep as the 3-Dimensional events happen grandly, clearly, colorfully and ceaselessly before your very eyes.


Shades of Tristram Shandy (Stern) and Tom Jones (Fielding)   January 14, 2007
Mezzanine (UK)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

A wonderful rampage through the twentieth century in the vein of the best eighteenth and nineteenth century chroniclers, Boyd's fictional hero is so well drawn, so detailed and so human that each page produces new fascinations. From the turn of the century until the 1970s when he stands on the wealthy promontory of life, by the Mediterranean, looking back on his journey, Boyd produces a young man desperate to (1) lose his virginity (2) avoid dying in a trench somewhere near Ypres during the Great War and (3) find a purpose.

I was lent a copy of this book by a friend and I have enjoyed it so much that, not having read Boyd before, I have ordered two other Boyds plus this one, so I can return my borrowed copy. It should be compulsory reading for 18 year-olds studying English lit, but I suspect it won't be because it will be deemed 'too long.' Although 476 pages, they are long pages (small letters, 40+ lines) and the book, sized the same as a 'typical' paperback, would weigh in at closer to 700 pages, although the length detracts not a jot from the book's brilliance and it never feels padded, unlike many shorter books.


Boyd Is A Genius   June 11, 2008
Jane Grimes (Perth, Western Australia)
William Boyd is without a doubt a literary genius. I loved this
book and I tore through it at a rate of knots which is unusual for
me because I usually take my time to read a book. Boyd is one of our
greatest living writers. I urge anyone to get totally lost in the strange
world of John James Todd.


i would give it a million stars   December 27, 2000
7 out of 11 found this review helpful

i have read everything Wm. Boyd has published--even the screenplays. he's my favorite writer and i have a Ph.D. in Literature. ok--enough said--read this book--it will change you; it will haunt you. i have read TNC about 12 times. it is an insane book. here are Boyd's best, in order (according to snargey me, that is, and who am i to say what's best? an authority, that's who, knucklehead!): 1. the new confessions 2. brazzaville beach 3. on the yankee station 4. an ice-cream war 5. a good man in africa the rest of his books are kind of "uh..." to tell you the truth...but the aforementioned are great!