Mr Bones: Twenty Stories - Softcover

Theroux, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241969379 ISBN 13: 9780241969373

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2015

Synopsis

Mr Bones is a sparkling and darkly humorous collection of short stories by bestselling novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux. A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked. He shows us humanity possessed, consumed by its own desires, always with his carefully honed eye and the subtle idiosyncrasies that bring his characters to life. 'As cool as Somerset Maugham . . . as observant, intuitive, wry, inventive and eloquent as Graham Greene' Sunday Times 'Theroux is fluent, witty and almost faultlessly able to deliver a satisfying story' Melvyn Bragg 'One of the most accomplished and worldly-wise writers of his generation' The Times

About this title

Book Description

HMH Hardcover 2014, Previous ISBN 978-0-544-32402-2

From the Back Cover

 “Suave and accomplished . . . [The stories] are unsettling, resistant to tidy denouement and faintly misanthropic.” — Washington Post
 
“Beneath the deceptive elegance of these stories, land mines lurk, and Theroux detonates them with gusto.” — O, the Oprah Magazine
 
A family watches their patriarch transform into the singing, wisecracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector publicly destroys his most valuable pieces. Two boys stand by as their father wages war on the raccoons living under their house. In this new collection, acclaimed author Paul Theroux shows us humanity possessed, consumed by compulsive desire, always with his carefully honed eye for detail and the subtle idiosyncrasies that bring his characters to life. Searing, dark, and sure to unsettle, Mr. Bones is a stunning display of Theroux’s “fluent, faintly sinister powers of vision and imagination” (The New Yorker).
 
“Fans of Theroux’s fiction will be pleased to observe, in the twenty stories collected in Mr. Bones, clear evidence of how little he has mellowed over time . . . Mr. Bones is a series of characteristically dark and sharply focused snapshots from the world that Paul Theroux has observed—and invented.”  — Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review
 
PAUL THEROUX is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include The Lower River and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0241969379
• ISBN 13: 9780241969373
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368