20 December 2014

The New Confessions by William Boyd [1987]

This is a fantastic novel which I re-read recently.  It's a bildungsroman covering the career of a Scots soldier turned film-maker in the first half of the twentieth century.  It's incredibly evocative and the span of the novel is awe-inspiring.  Very satisfying in the same way that Citizen Kane is satisfying.


There is a literary thread running through this novel in that the protagonist is obsessed by Rousseau's Confessions.  I admit I did not quite appreciate the significance of this and I suppose I need to read Rousseau next.

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