The fictional narrator of these memoirs, a man of many different guises, has reconstructed his past, giving it wit & life, tragedy & pathos, & imposed an order on it through careful editing. Life, it seems, has no apparent plot & so it can seem messier than fiction; sometimes it seems as if our hero is leading many different, separate lives.. .`A memoir; a collection of short stories; an assemblage of fables; an anthology of Theroux: a book in which he is everywhere present, as himself & as someone other.. . Endlessly inventive, beguiling, provocative & insidiously readable`
- ” Sunday Telegraph”.