"This is my only story. Now
that I am sixty I can tell it." He, the narrator,
was a twenty-one-year-old art student traveling the
world. She was a countess -- apparently cold,
haughty, and inaccessible -- traveling with Haroun,
her ambiguous companion. When the young man makes
their acquaintance at a hotel in Sicily, he finds
himself filled with unexpected lust and playing a
part in something he doesn't quite understand.
Filled with Theroux's typically effortless but
devastating descriptions of people and places, The
Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro is a brilliant
portrayal of aging and decay, a shocking tale of
sensuality in a golden age. The thrill and risk of
pursuit and desire mark the accompanying stories of
the sexual awakening and rites of passage of a
Boston boyhood, the ruin of a writer in Africa, and
the bewitchment of a retiree in Hawaii. This is Paul
Theroux at his most allusive and wise, writing with
a deep understanding of the frailties of men and
boys. |
