The New Confessions

Uma autobiografia épica de um personagem fictício — John James Todd — desde seu nascimento na Escócia, passando por suas aventuras nas duas Guerras Mundiais, a indústria do cinema mudo em Berlim na década de 1920, sua inclusão na lista negra do senador McCarthy e seus últimos anos no Mediterrâneo. Há muito de bom e envolvente neste romance. Impossível gostar do personagem principal — mas é ele o narrador e há muito pouco sobre inúmeros personagens que aparecem e desaparecem ao longo do livro. Mesmo assim, Boyd faz uma excelente narrativa.

“My first act on entering the world was to kill my mother.” So begins William Boyd’s The New Confessions, the pseudo-autobiography of John James Todd, a Scottish-born filmmaker whose career begins in the trenches of WWI and ends on the Hollywood blacklists of the 1950s.

Todd shares first names and outlook with his hero, French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and spends his career working on an epic film based on Rousseau's memoirs, The Confessions. His quest takes him on a rollicking journey from Berlin to Hollywood, wife to lover, peaks of fame to penury, and leaves a trail of wreckage and memories behind.

Todd is an engaging Everyman anti-hero – likeable even when he is not particularly nice. The book is warm, funny, and full show more of life from the opening page to Todd’s concluding ruminations.

Also posted on Rose City Reader. show less

This is my 8th Boyd novel and while good, it’s not my favorite and I’m glad I didn’t read this early on as it may have kept me from reading others. In terms of pacing it was pretty even, although the parts where JJ waxes on and on and on about his Confessions filming does get a bit much. I resorted to skimming.

JJ himself isn’t such a winning character; like many of Boyd’s others he makes a lot of bad decisions, but on top of that he’s a bit too sorry for himself. He has the insight to see that he’s the common denominator of all the trouble in his life, but he is powerless to change or feels that he is. Either way he never bothers to try and that makes his whining trying to read about. He also dislikes a lot of people on show more sight and that doesn’t help. Each trouble and tragedy is delivered to the reader with a thud of finality. Baldly stated it hits you in your brain to good effect.

Like many of Boyd’s other novels featuring male protagonists, the women in the book only serve to forward his actions, they never have lives in their own right or have stories that don’t prop up his. Doon might be an exception here, but she isn’t since JJ is so hung up on her that she becomes a source of self-pity. And as usual, sex is a common preoccupation for JJ. Right to the end he’s a lecherous old bugger. show less

The New Confessions is a mockumentary novel, at times so believable that you forget John James Todd never lived. Still, it is considerably shallower than Any Human Heart, Boyd's possibly best novel to date, although the two novels are strikingly similar narrative wise. Perhaps it is because the main character in The New Confessions attracts neither our disdain nor our admiration. His life journey takes us to exciting times and places, and perhaps the greatest merit of the novel is that it ties the events of the century together and shows us how our recent history has influenced us in the West to be who we are today.
Any book by William Boyd is definitely worth the read in my view, but I am glad I didn't begin with The New Confessions.

An epic autobiography of a fictional character - John James Todd, from his birth in Scotland, through his adventures in 2 World Wars, the silent film industry in Berlin in the 1920s, his blacklisting under McCarthy & his senior years in the Med. There is much that is good & gripping about this novel but it was hard to like the central character - everything is narrated through his eyes & there is very little character development of the long list of characters that come and go throughout the book. I would have liked some other perspectives but nonetheless Boyd does some excellent story telling - the part set in WW1 is particularly vivid.

The New Confessions preceded Any Human Heart by a couple of decades (both in authorship and setting), but there are clear parallels between the two. Both are written as the memoirs of elderly men looking back on their lives; both men have had remarkably varied lives, following a numbers of careers and living in several countries; both are transients, their lives battered by the traumatic history of the 20th Century; both men describe their lives with all their faults on display; both suffer from doomed true love, but enjoy other relationships and friendships, but ultimately, the survivors of what they live through, are left alone. The books also share one character - Land Fothergill - who is incidental in the New Confessions, but more show more significant in Any Human Heart. Like it's successor, the New Confessions is a modern masterpiece, sparingly written, but rich in the essential information, written in an absorbing style. With the exception of the disappointing Armadillo, Boyd must be one of the greatest British authors of recent decades, a superb storyteller as well an eloquent writer. show less

This book was my introduction to William Boyd and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The title refers to The Confessions of Rousseau, but Boyd's protagonist, John James Todd is much more likeable, if not more interesting, than Jean Jacques. The book relates Todd's life over much of the twentieth century in autobiographical style. The voice is arresting and the writing lovely. I still remember this read and am sure that I will return to it one day.