The New Confessions

by William Boyd

In this extraordinary novel, William Boyd presents the autobiography of John James Todd, whose uncanny and exhilarating life as one of the most unappreciated geniuses of the twentieth century is equal parts Laurence Stern, Charles Dickens, Robertson Davies, and Saul Bellow, and a hundred percent William Boyd.  

From his birth in 1899, Todd was doomed. Emerging from his angst-filled childhood, he rushes into the throes of the twentieth century on the Western Front during the Great War, and quickly changes his role on the battlefield from cannon fodder to cameraman. When he becomes a prisoner of war, he discovers Rousseau's Confessions , and dedicates his life to bringing the memoir to the silver screen. Plagued by bad luck and blind ambition, Todd becomes a celebrated London upstart, a Weimar luminary, and finally a disgruntled director of cowboy movies and the eleventh member of the Hollywood Ten. Ambitious and entertaining, Boyd has invented a most irresistible hero.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Scotland, Novels, Literature, Contemporary, Roman

480 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2000

About the author

Note: William^^Boyd

Of Scottish descent, Boyd was born in Accra, Ghana on 7th March, 1952 and spent much of his early life there and in Nigeria where his mother was a teacher and his father, a doctor. Boyd was in Nigeria during the Biafran War, the brutal secessionist conflict which ran from 1967 to 1970 and it had a profound effect on him.

At the age of nine years he attended Gordonstoun school, in Moray, Scotland and then Nice University (Diploma of French Studies) and Glasgow University (MA Hons in English and Philosophy), where he edited the Glasgow University Guardian. He then moved to Jesus College, Oxford in 1975 and completed a PhD thesis on Shelley. For a brief period he worked at the New Statesman magazine as a TV critic, then he returned to Oxford as an English lecturer teaching the contemporary novel at St Hilda's College (1980-83). It was while he was here that his first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), was published.

Boyd spent eight years in academia, during which time his first film, Good and Bad at Games, was made. When he was offered a college lecturership, which would mean spending more time teaching, he was forced to choose between teaching and writing.

Boyd was selected in 1983 as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists' in a promotion run by Granta magazine and the Book Marketing Council. He also became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in the same year, and is also an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has been presented with honorary doctorates in literature from the universities of St. Andrews, Stirling and Glasgow. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2005.

Boyd has been with his wife Susan since they met as students at Glasgow University and all his books are dedicated to her. His wife is editor-at-large of Harper's Bazaar magazine, and they currently spend about thirty to forty days a year in the US. He and his wife have a house in Chelsea, West London but spend most of the year at their chateau in Bergerac in south west France, where Boyd produces award-winning wines.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The New Confessions is a long and tortuous journey through life and art and the novel is remarkably innovative. It is the most ambitious and intellectual book by William Boyd and unarguably his best.

Rumors began to spread through the industry about the film, its revolutionary techniques, of a scale and size matched only by the ambition of its director. I suppose early 1929 saw me at the very apex of my fame. Impressive achievements behind me, limitless potential ahead. I was feted, courted, flattered. Lubitsch wrote to me from Hollywood, inviting me over. I gave interviews to newspapers from France, Italy, Britain, the U.S.A. In Germany, in Berlin, I was for a few months a household name. I was approached in the street by strangers, was offered drinks in bars, signed menus in restaurants. All the heady trappings of temporary renown. A publisher wanted to publish my autobiography. A newspaper article about my war experiences was mooted as a possible movie. The whole world, it seemed, was agog with anticipation. The Confessions, as one newspaper put it, would be the film to end all films.

Irony is the author’s most powerful weapon.
We live and enjoy living and are full of dreams and hopes… And we never know what surprises the world and history keep for us lying ahead.

The world and its people spin along with me, an infinite aggregate of atoms, all obeying Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. I look back at my life in this gravid tensed moment and I see it clearly now. Above me, two gulls ride high on the thermals heading home. It has been deeply paradoxical and fundamentally uncertain. That’s how I would sum the whole business up, my time on this small planet – deeply paradoxical and fundamentally uncertain…

Uncertainty principle rules equally atoms and humans so our future is always hidden in the fog.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of William Boyd. He’s a writer who produces one-off novels that can surprise, entertain, and sometimes prompt the reader to think rather more deeply on a subject than they otherwise might. I don't always like his books – I disliked Armadillo intensely – but I can never fault the quality of his writing. And he can produce stories that grab you and haul you through its pages and spit you out at the end breathless and panting for more. Brazzaville Beach is a case in point.

So, how did this one fare? Well I'd been putting off reading it due to its apparent similarity to another of his books Any Human Heart - a book I liked a lot. Both follow the fortunes of a man born at the start of the 20th century and track his life, taking in some of the major world events that followed. But I needn't have worried, I left it so long that I'd forgotten pretty much everything about AHH by the time I picked this one up!

John James Todd was born in Edinburgh in 1899. I enjoyed the sections covering his early life, but the story really came to life when he found himself (against his better judgement) a foot soldier in the First World War. I won't give much away but suffice to say he spends some time in captivity and during this spell he comes across a book that is to be his inspiration and his obsession: The Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the 18th century philosopher. Todd had been interested in photography from an early age, and this evolved into a love of film making. He vowed to make a film of the epic autobiography.

That's probably all I want to say about the plot – better to discover the delights of Todd’s journey through life for yourself if it feels like it might float your boat. What I will say is that it is a spectacular journey filled with all the ups and downs we all experience and told with a rich vocabulary and a gift for delivering genuinely laugh out loud anecdotes. There is sadness, too. It’s all here.

The overriding message is that life is deeply paradoxical and fundamentally uncertain – you can't double guess it, and there's no point trying to work through the ‘what ifs’ either. It will be what it will be.

It's a long book, at nearly 600 pages, but what a full and interesting life it was for Todd. There were times I really forgot I was reading a fictional novel. It sucked me in so deeply. It touched every emotion, and I feel enriched for having read it.

As a footnote, I spotted an interesting similarity with a stream of Tom Wolfe’s novel A Man in Full. In Wolfe’s tale, one of his characters, Conrad Hensley, discovers a book whilst he too is imprisoned. This also proves to be a life changing moment as his enlightenment of the Stoic philosophy shapes all that transpires thereafter for him. For those who haven't read Wolfe's novel, it's another I'd highly recommend.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this when I was living in France and was desperate for something to read in English. This was on a local bookshelf and I tore through it in two days. I've re-read it 5 times. Boyd's other books are a joy as well but 'Confessions' is definitely one of my all-time favorites.

[G.K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 20th Century Masterpiece. So utterly convincing at times you wonder if it's all true! William Boyd seems equally at home depicting scenes of domestic drudgery or the glamourous life of the artist in pre-war Berlin. Pathos, farce, tragedy, it's all here. there are some brilliant passages describing life in the trenches of the First World War evoking the horror, boredom, futility and heroism of life on the Western Front. Equally well written are the laugh out loud sections.

The book is written in the style of an autobiography, which give the tale and added dimension. As you see everything through John James Todd's eyes, it's not long before you realize that although he may be in some ways brilliant, there is also a lot going on that he really doesn't have a clue about.

As you progress through the book you'll ask yourself, is our hero mad or a genius. john James Todd lurches from one scene to another with breathtaking style but not always with dazzling results. It's rather like watching Maradonna charge down a football pitch leaving the opposing team's players strewn on the ground behind him before scoring the perfect goal, only to realize he's put the ball in his own net.

[Andrew Trimboli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't think it possible to like another Boyd more than I did Any Human Heart, and how wrong I was. TNC, without being hyperbolic, is probably the most startlingly epic piece of story telling I've ever come across. Within pages I'd forgot all about Logan Mountstuart and was utterly submerged in Todd's unrelenting and lifelong plight for true love and a life devoid of calamity. It's incomprehensible how Boyd stitched this whole thing up so perfectly. Superficially he's part linguist, part philosopher, part war and film historian but the labyrinthine and often hilarious life he's charted for Todd is unfathomable. A five star rating for this masterpiece is almost asinine, insulting even.

[Bandit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good, maybe even great, certainly dangerously close to great, this fictional autobiography is really something. It's an epic in its way, spanning most of the last century, covering both World Wars and the life preceding them, in between and after until early 1970s. John James Todd is a man worthy of a book, he isn't necessarily a good man, he's something of a cad, completely self absorbed, self important, self all sorts of things...and yet it is precisely his self awareness that makes his retrospective recollection of years past such a compelling read. Boyd's writing is really terrific here, from banalities of daily life to the (and I quote) chaos and cruel absurdity of war, he brings to life the world of his protagonist with an appropriately cinematic vividness. It's a completely immersive read, traversing continents, years and, of course, movies. John James Todd is, above all, an artist, a film maker extraordinaire, obsessed with perfection, perpetually in mourning of the bygone days of silent cinema. Throughout most of his life his sole pursuit has been an epic adaptation of Rousseau's Confessions and the reader can't help but draw parallels between the famous philosopher and Todd himself, the way both had navigated the vicissitudes and vagaries and good fortunes of life. It's a fascinating story, biography so realistic, you'll forget it isn't, a life entirely too fraught with passions, misguided and guided pursuits, regrets, what ifs, triumphs, carnality, visceral violence and every so often occasional glimpses of kindness...that it reads genuine, more then plausible, just about real. I loved this book, it was a pleasure to read, immensely entertaining and enjoyable experience. Most enthusiastically recommended.

[Catherine Davison · Rating 3 out of 5]

As another reviewer wrote, this book charts the long and tortuous life of John James Todd. I found the attempts to link Rousseau’s life and his Confessions with this character John James was too overdone, too obvious and this caused me to roll my eyes once too often: both born to mothers who die immediately after giving birth, both bearing the double barrelled first names Jean Jacques/ John James, both falling for older women while still teenagers and subsequently running away from home and all responsibility. The main difference is that Rousseau at least left a legacy, this character just made sentimental silent films and rabbits on about women’s breasts ad infinitum. I don’t think I can take any character seriously who describes the woman he’s lusting after as having breasts like the lid of a soup tureen. Was that Boyd’s attempt to riff on the meme of Josephine and the champagne glasses?
Overall this book seemed to me to rely too heavily on storyline and too little on literary finesse. It just became tedious after about the 350th page of the 528 page total.

[jeniwren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will be one of my best reads for 2020 and I always enjoy this author especially his earlier works. Published in 1987 this is similar in style and themes to that of Any Human Heart which is one of my all time favourite novels. At 570 pages it has kept me enthralled in its scope taking in one man’s life. It reads like an autobiography where as a young man he excels at mathematics , enlists and after he is sent to the front in WW1 finds himself as a POW, several marriages that all fail and a long career in film making with some success and dramatic failures. A most intriguing and well told story with many interesting characters who come in and out of his life.

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basically it's a brilliant read and becoming more fascinating as I go on with the theme of Rousseau becoming more important to the story.
This was written several years before Any Human Heart and is in many ways I think better.

Why are there so few writers who can do what Boyd does? Tell a story. Too many authors are hung up on wordsmithery and being experimental but lack basic storytelling skills.

Incredibly good. Flawed but loveable character of John James Todd.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a marvelous novel, in its writing and its plot development. However, the last 50 pages are nasty. Lots of random low-key WWII-era racism and a strange interpretation of the McCarthy witch hunts all "in the guise of humor", but I cannot forgive. Unfortunately it pretty much ruined my experience with what was one of the best things I've ever read. It still is, and highly inspiring, but my God. I will never forget it, for better and for worse.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book! It tells the story of John James Todd from WW1 through to 1972. It covers his full and remarkable life in Berlin and Hollywood. Then Mccarthyism - which I hadn't read much about, so was particularly interested in that part. His romances, marriages (mostly failed) were also covered. It was one of those books that I was sad when I reached the end!

[Barry Welsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars. Incredible. One of Boyd's best novels

[Robert W · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently reread The New Confessions by William Boyd. This is one of my favorite books, and rereading it is always a pleasure. That can't be said about a lot of books, even ones I liked a lot the first time around. The Baron in the Trees also has that quality, and they have an unusual connection in that each touches on the European Enlightenment.

The New Confessions is about a peripatetic English filmmaker whose career reminds one a little of Abel Gance here, Luis Bunuel there, with some D.W. Griffith, Fritz Lang, and Hollywood 10 thrown in. It is a credit to the imagination that Boyd can contrive a situation that allows an Englishman to inhabit all these roles. (He repeats this feat in Any Human Heart, but The New Confessions is the better book.) The series of unlikely events is far-fetched but basically believable. Rereading it, I find myself cringing at John James Todd's self-destructive inability to compromise. When I first read it, I admired that. That's one thing that makes this book great; the protagonist embodies these characteristics that are bound to strike one differently as one reads it over again.

John James Todd is not a monster, but he is careless and thoughtless, and hurts people he shouldn't. He's selfish in a very particular way (though not greedy). He is capable of generosity and even heroism. He's incredibly narcissistic. All these qualities make his life interesting, and the novel proposes that his strengths and weaknesses, his weird up-and-down life story are in the end unimportant; his masterpiece, a film adaptation of Rousseau's Confessions, is what counts. The New Confessions is a ringing endorsement of art. For a nonbelieving lover of beauty like me, it's an inspiring notion.

And yet... You read the book because John James Todd's life is so fascinating and moving. And the work of art that is the purpose of his life is, in the end, a fiction. We readers never will see The Confessions film because it doesn't really exist. This is the irony of any book about creating great art. Boyd knows the irony is there and plays with it. I suspect he, like me, is a true believer in art. But he is too smart not to realize the problematic nature of writing fiction about art. This separates The New Confessions from, say, Somerset Maugham's The Moon and the Sixpence, an inferior book with a similar theme.

[Mark Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Boyd writes a gripping narrative and does a great line in flawed, self-absorbed but ultimately charming male characters. I was completely swept up in this story and sorry to finish it. So why not five stars, I hear you ask? Two things.

Whilst engaging, the central character John James Todd lacks the distinctive edge of the truly memorable anti-heroes of writers like Vladimir Nabokov, Iris Murdoch and John Banville. Is Todd even meant to be an anti-hero or is he intended to be more of a genial but essentially harmless tit? It’s debatable. Either way I suspect he will fade from memory relatively quickly whereas the truly Grade A shits like Humbert Humbert of Lolita, Charles Arrowby of The Sea, the Sea or Freddie Montgomery of The Book of Evidence are etched on it irrevocably.

Second, the supporting characters are quite thinly developed and the women in particular serve largely as vehicles for the various foibles and self-indulgences of the central male.

Of course William Boyd is by no means the only or most serious offender in either of these respects and I reiterate my earlier point that he is a fine writer on a number of levels. However, as with Any Human Heart, I am again left with the impression that he sits somewhere in the second rank of contemporary British novelists when I suspect he sees himself more in the first.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded down.

William Boyd never fails to produce an enjoyable book, but this one didn't quite resonate with me. I went into it hoping for another 'Any Human Heart', but left mainly disappointed. I love the fictional autobiographical style of these two books (and, more recently, 'Love Is Blind'): watching a person's life ebb and flow from cradle to grave.

The problem with this book was that I couldn't empathise with the protagonist. I just didn't like him. He was selfish and craven and didn't seem to develop any insight into his own character as he grew up. In particular, his lechery was almost uncomfortable at times.

On top of that, I felt that the ebb and flow of this life was overly artificial: any upswing had to be met with an equal downswing and vice versa. Perhaps the oscillating nature of Todd's fortunes is what makes this fictional character worthy of the book, but it struck me as unrealistically random at times.

Finally, in terms of the writing itself, I felt that Boyd relied on foreshadowing a little too much and it was often employed clumsily.

However, in spite of this, I still found it a compelling read. Todd's life didn't culminate in some triumph that gave meaning to everything, but nor do most lives, and it's laudable that Boyd resisted the temptation to simplify his life's arc. All in all I'd recommend trying this if you enjoyed 'Any Human Heart' and 'Love Is Blind', but I wouldn't rank it alongside them.

[Huw Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

What makes a brilliant book?

A compelling narrative, leading to an illuminating conclusion?

Characters who are engrossing, and who we can identify with as being either a bit like ourselves, or like other people we've come across in real life?

Writing which invokes a sense of place and time - sometimes a place once visited, often a time never personally experienced?

Clever use of metaphor and imagery which are able to take us, the reader, to another place to ponder on the pattern of life?

And then that certain x-factor which is impossible to describe, but is something to do with learning about yourself and the human condition within the pages of a compelling book?

If any of this resonates in some way with you - then you simply must read this terrific offering from William Boyd.

It tells, very Forest Gump like, the life story of one John James Todd, whose main calling in life was as a film maker in the early part of the 20th century. This vocation allows the author to put him in contact with a lot of familiar names and situations from recent history, and also allows the older Todd to reflect to some extent on his life, the lessons he's learnt from it, and some of the mistakes he continues to make - because he's only human after all....

There is an interesting parallel theme with the life of Jean Jacques Rousseau - who shares more than just his first two initials in common with our main protagonist - which is developed throughout the book. I suspect the novel could be re-read a dozen times, and all of the references would still not be fully apparent. It adds another interesting sub-theme to the narrative.

To be pernickety, the story can be a little slow at times. Todd's early years, and the author's over zealous dissection of the technical minutiae of early film making make the first couple of hundred pages ever so slightly turgid at times. But after that, the second half of the book races to its conclusion, with gold nugget after gold nugget being presented on a velvet cushion to the hungry reader.

William Boyd is one of those rare authors who never disappoints - and my pernickety comments aside (99.9% of this reading experience really is as good as it gets!) - he's spot on yet again with "The New Confessions" !

[Bettie]

Description: The extraordinary, candid story of John James Todd, a Scotsman, born in 1899 and one of the great self-appointed geniuses of the twentieth century. His is an astonishingly rich and diverse career, with remarkable successes and equally dramatic failures. Told in his own words from the vantage point of not-so-serene old age and self-imposed exile, Todd lets us in on the secrets of his fraught and intriguing life.

Beginning with his bizarre boyhood and schooldays in Scotland we move on to his incredible experiences of the First World War, and from there we follow his fretful progress through Berlin of the Twenties, Mexico in 1939, and the Allied invasion of St. Tropez and Los Angeles of the McCarthy era.

Charming and exasperating, shrewd and unbelievably foolish, vain and disarmingly straightforward – John James Todd is all of these. Although we may not believe absolutely everything he recounts we have to allow him this last conclusion: ‘I have done all that being-human business, all right. I have hunkered down in the mulch of the phenomenal world.’

As we discover more about the astonishing life Todd has led we track one individual’s erratic, unpredictable path through the chaos and contingency of three quarters of our century, and along the way we learn, amongst many other things, some curious facts about the life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and how to make the perfect dry martini.

Opening: My first act on earth was to kill my mother.

4* Restless
5* Any Human Heart
TR Waiting for Sunrise
4* Ordinary Thunderstorms
4* Brazzaville Beach
2* Solo
3* Armadillo
TR The New Confessions
5* Sweet Caress
3* A Haunting
WL Bamboo

[The Final Chapter · Rating 5 out of 5]

SJC Review: 5.27

Boyd has produced a magisterial account of one man’s obsession to produce an artistic piece of cinematic homage in dedication to his inspiration, Rousseau’s ‘Confessions’. The protagonist, as in so many of Boyd’s novels, is a deeply flawed character, whose critical eye on those surrounding him does not extend to his own narcissistic tendencies, and whose disregard for the distress he causes others displays the same cold aloofness which his own surgeon father had shown him. John James Todd, nevertheless, is a wonderful literary creation whose lifelong vision allows the reader to accompany him from the horror of the trenches of the Great War, to the cultural milieu of pre-war Weimar Germany, and the excesses of the pioneering days of talkies Hollywood. So detailed does Boyd make the cinematic achievements of his leading character, and so evocative is his recreation of Weimar Germany and early Hollywood, the reader becomes convinced that this work embodies the fictionalised account of a real life.

[Alexia Kaloudis · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The world and it’s people spin along with me, an infinite aggregate of atoms, all obeying Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. I look back at my life in this gravid tensed moment and I see it clearly now... It has been deeply paradoxical and fundamentally uncertain. That’s how I would sum the whole business up, my time on this planet - deeply paradoxical and fundamentally uncertain...’

After reading Any Human Heart, I was certain that any other Boyd wouldn’t come close. The New Confessions holds many similarities to AHH - the affinity that you feel towards the protagonist becomes equally potent but yet in fundamentally different ways.

I spent most of the book conflicted as to whether John James Todd was just an impulsive narcissist, or a genuinely tortured artistic genius, constantly haunted by his past mistakes.

This is another phenomenal work by Boyd and it’s left me emotional and reeling once more.

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oops, wait, *this* is the best William Boyd to date, while Any Human Heart, similar in some ways to this one, is a close second.

[Ruthiella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alas, I think that no William Boyd novel will ever quite measure up to Any Human Heart. This is the fourth book of his that I have read since AHH. Interestingly enough the conceit of The New Confessions is rather similar to AHH in that it is Western history in the 20th century as seen through the lens of one man’s life. But The New Confessions is not told in journal form but rather as an old man looking back on his life, which is a very different style to read. But similar to AHH, Boyd does seamlessly blend history and fiction to create a believable pseudohistory of a life.

The man is John James Todd and the book’s structure and tone (I suspect?) is supposed to mirror that of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s The Confessions. Unfortunately I am not familiar with Rousseau, so I can’t really be sure. But this is definitely a very “warts and all” confession. Todd often tries to explain his behavior but much of his confessions make him out to be a rather selfish and uncompromising person as he moves from highs to lows, from his time as a soldier in WWI to his years as a celebrated silent film director in Weimar Germany, a victim of McCarthyism, and so on. Definitely worth reading for fans of Boyd. Despite my personal dislike of JJ Todd, he as a character was interesting as was his tumultuous life and the pages turned easily.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Until fairly near the end of this book, I was labouring under the misapprehension that it was written in 2000 as that was when the edition I happened to be reading was printed. Only quite late on did I realise that it was actually published back in 1987. Which means that it was written some ten years before Any Human Heart rather than immediately afterwards.

I mention this only because there are, to put it mildly, certain similarities between the two books. Both are autobiographies of fictional artists whose lives played out against the backdrop of the major events of the 21st Century. Any Human Heart's Logan Mountstewart was a novelist while The New Confessions' John James Todd (surely far and away the most ordinary sounding name Boyd has ever given to a major character?) is a film maker and script doctor. Realising that this book was written some years before Any Human Heart, rather than immediately afterwards ought not to make any difference to my attitude towards the book, but I can't help thinking it did. That it felt less like it was a lazy re-tread and more like a novel that has every right to stand on its own feet.

John James Todd is an interesting character not least because Boyd, deliberately or otherwise, never really makes quite clear whether he is merely a narcissistic control-freak with delusions of grandeur or if he is instead a genuinely gifted and overlooked film-maker unfairly caught out by events, and by an unwillingness to compromise on his vision. Because, of course, the films themselves don't exist and so we, the readers, can make up our own minds as to whether his films were works of genius, or merely of mono-maniacal obsession. Boyd, deliberately or otherwise, seems to leave both possibilities open to us.

He is born in Edinburgh at the turn of the century and the early part of the book perhaps worked all the better for me for being set in my home city, albeit over a hundred years earlier. Sitting reading it in my kitchen, there's a reference to his going to the King's Theatre to watch “some tedious pantomime” and, with the back of the King's Theatre visible out of the window, I was struck by the thought that he would probably have walked past my flat on his way there (I've seen pictures of it back in 1914 – it looked rather grander, back then).

Todd ends up enlisting to fight in the First World War mainly to extract himself from an embarrassing situation in which he had run away from his boarding school with the intent of confessing his undying love to his late mother's sister and while I've read plenty other fictional accounts of life in the trenches, I liked the slightly different perspective offered here by virtue of the fact that the man who does marry his aunt helps him out by finding him work with the army's film team. It is here, early on, we first see evidence of his obsessive tendencies as a film-maker. Naively, he tries to make a kind of art-cinema account of what life was actually like in the trenches and appears genuinely surprised when the censors order it to be destroyed.

He later ends up captured by the Germans and held as a prisoner in Weilburg and Mainz (oddly, I've been to both these towns too, though as Todd is a POW throughout these sections, I'm not sure that added anything for me. It is while being held as a prisoner here that he meets a German guard Karl-Heinz, who lends him a copy of Rousseau's The Confessions, which becomes an obsession for the rest of his life (I do wonder whether there might be aspects of this book which can only be fully appreciated by someone who has read The Confessions, but on the other hand, I think this is as much as anything a story about a life driven by an obsession, what that obsession happens to be is of only secondary importance.

After the war, he marries young and then by a rather convoluted series of events, ends up in Berlin making films with his former prison guard Karl-Heinz in an acting role. Following the success of his adaptation of Rousseau's Julie, he persuades a production company to back him in a rather quixotic project to turn Rousseau's Confessions into a three part, nine hour film. It never actually gets made, at least not in its entirety, although the story of both his obsession with its leading actress , Doon Bogan (a more typically Boyd-esque name), for whom he leaves his wife and has an ill-fated affair and with making the film itself, is what drives the story along.

Late on in the book – and I can't quite decide if it's a bit of a mis-step, he finds himself caught up in the McCarthy-era witch-hunt of Communist-sympathisers in Hollywood. I found the explanation as to how and why this happened a little bit dissatisfying. If you're only going to read one fictional biography written by William Boyd, I'd start with Any Human Heart, but I'd recommend both.

[Reeta Olivier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story following the life of self absorbed James John Todd. Even if not completely likeable I often felt sorry for him. The v lng book often felt like a true autobiography with historical political and cultural references which served as many highs and lows in the main characters life. Could’ve done with more interesting female characters.
Indisputable highlight and reason for 4 stars: the unexpected cameo of Kurt Gödel and his incompleteness theorem (my fave theorem) and the protagonists (an artist) reflection on how this mathematical theorem could apply to philosophical meaning of life - what i also mentioned in the final conclusion of my maths master’s dissertation!!!

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

John James Todd is born in Scotland in 1899, and The New Confessions follows his life from childhood to a boarding school, to the Great War, to his work in silent film in Germany, to the Second World War, to America up to the 1970s. Todd's life's work is to adapt Rousseau's Confessions into film. In some ways, this novel can be introduced to prospective readers as a Forrest Gump story--history from the point of view of one man's life. But what makes this novel work is not the sweep of history but rather the convincing way in which Boyd invests his hero with desires, drives, dreams, enemies, loves and lovers, flaws and impulsiveness, and heartbreak.

The most obvious complaint one might make about this novel is that Boyd has written it three times. Any Human Heart, published in 2002, and Sweet Caress, published in 2015, both follow the template established here in 1988. Of the three, Any Human Heart is my favorite, perhaps because I read it first but I suspect that I'd still like it best if I re-read next week. Having said that, many of its transitions and unique scenes seem obviously copied from this one, including a moment of voyeurism, being a prisoner of war, the contrived "gotcha" divorce, going to America only to flee prosecution. Although Sweet Caress comes last, I like Amory Clay most of the three heroes.

There are many things that are remarkable about these novels, but I'd like to highlight how successfully Boyd captures midlife and decline. The most interesting part of The New Confessions is Todd's life after he turns 35. So much of our culture obsesses with coming-of-age and early struggles. Even middle age is usually only of interest if it is tied to a midlife crisis. It's nice to see a novel push through that moment to doubt, heartbreak, disappointment, a second act, and more.

While reading New Confessions, I began to think about Boyd's career. So far as I can tell, he's had a great career. He has had several of his novels adapted for film and TV--two even star Hayley Atwell. And yet, no one I know seems to have read him--I can't even find mention of him on Marginal Revolution, which usually has a few words on everyone. I am surprised how often I look at his books on Goodreads and see no one in my community has read them. Perhaps these are not the places to gauge popularity or relevance, but I usually find them useful indicators. I couldn't find The New Confessions at my library and had to order it through inter-library loan. I have read several interviews with Boyd, and a few theories often occur to me about his enduring appeal and its absence. First, he seems like a writer born into the wrong era. His novels are literary, but they are mostly set in the past, perhaps because the past is a more welcome home for his realistic approach than our postmodern era. I also suspect that Freud's psychology works for novels and it's more convincing when set in the past. Therefore, because a lot of Boyd's work is society, id, sex, and death, these books are set in the past but appeal less to a post-Freudian era. It seems possible to me that several of his novels are excellent in spite of somehow being irrelevant to the zeitgeist, but I'm not even sure I have a word to describe novelists who might fit into such a category. If no other word is taken, how about "Boydian?"

One of my favorite things about these books is the way they take so many twists and turns into one relationship or country and out of it. I sometimes read Boyd's novels, particularly the three that follow an entire life, and think about what might be concluded. It occurs to me that accolades count for little, moments of personal courage count for a lot, setbacks are underrated (for obvious reasons), and that sex and love are more important than we realize, even if neither is as enduringly fascinating as we might prefer.

I expect that Boyd will prove to be one of those authors whose entire body of work I will read, even if his best works don't endure long after his life (or mine). Regardless, this one is a winner.

[Dick Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a startling opening paragraph narrator and protagonist John James Todd claims that he killed his mother by being born. He had a tough childhood because his father didn’t like him much and wouldn’t spend much time with him. He is a Scotsman who ran away from school when he was seventeen to join the army, about a year before the end of WWI, just in time for the battle of Ypres. Author William Boyd gives us plenty of gory detail on the terrible battlefield conditions. Todd is captured by the Germans but survives the war and becomes a movie photographer, script writer, and eventually a film director. All of this is covered in the first one-third of the book.
This book is classified as a novel but one could also think of it as a fictional memoir. Todd is born at the turn of the century and at the book’s end he’s about seventy-three. In the course of his life, he’ll marry and father several children, divorce his wife and begin a long time affair with a female film star having the unlikely name of Doon Bogan. She’s a Communist sympathizer and this will cause big problems for Todd.
At the end of each chapter Todd reflects while at his French villa about things that happened in that particular chapter; especially what he did and what he should have done. At age 73, Todd is also a dirty old man and likes to spy on his housekeeper when she’s in the toilet. Eventually, after a lot of soul searching, he comes to terms with his past life and meditates on the many deaths of his friends and business associates. He also accepts the fact that he could have had a better life if some of his actions and decisions would have been smarter.
Overall it’s the fascinating story of a man’s life populated with a host of interesting persons, most of whom have some pretty serious character defects.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Boyd is not the kind of writer who wows you or hits you over the head with his writing, but ever so subtly he draws you into the story and before you know it you are half way through and wanting more. John James Todd, the fictional autobiographer, begins the narration with his birth in 1899. Each chapter closes in 1972 with words from the present day protagonist as he assesses himself at age 73 looking back on his life which took him to both World Wars and to America. A seminal moment for him comes as a prisoner of the Germans in WWI. While in solitary confinement, he is desperate for reading material and his young German guard agrees to bring him books in exchange for...a kiss! In his desperation, the very heterosexual Todd agrees and so begins a lifelong friendship. The title, "The New Confessions" is a paean to "Les Confessions" by Jean Jacques Rousseau (the book he reads in German prison).

[John Bowen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just my favourite of Boyd's books, one of my top five all time favourite novels.

The life of John James Todd is never less than incredible, darkly comic and enthralling, soaked through with wit, memorable characters and period detail, this fictional autobiography of an unsung silent movie auteur is simply magnificent.

The great war, ensuing german depression, the (for Todd) unwelcome birth of talkies and the impact of McCarthyism are delivered so convincingly if you tore the cover off and lent it to a mate he'd probably be on wikipedia afterwards searching for details about Todd's forgotten masterpieces.

Honestly people, do yourselves a favour, go read it.

- John Bowen is the author of 'Where the Dead Walk' and 'Vessel'. You can find him here on GoodReads, and his published work at Amazon.

[Ginni · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Boyd brings to life the turbulence of both world wars and the red scare in this novel through the eyes of a creative and narcissistic filmmaker who never gets recognized as the genuis he is. It took me quite a while to really like this book. The main character, John James Todd, is so flawed. But eventually I developed empathy for him and wanted to see how his life would play out. I really enjoy Boyd's writing. His method of developing a story through the eyes of an unlikable or flawed character is unique.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a third of the way through this novel & don't want to finish it, so I'm stopping here, during WWI. I just don't like a single character in this book, and find the narrator especially despicable. He throws rocks at dogs! Plenty of narrators in other books are also unlikeable, but in those, the writing is pleasing. In this case, I don't find the author's humor vey funny - more sad than wry - which is, I think, why I'm not enjoying the book overall. I only get one life, & I'm not going to force myself to continue to slog through this very long book.

[Michael Savill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating story of one man's uncertain journey through life.