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Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Average Rating
Published:
HarperCollins 2014
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description
"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
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
09/30/2014
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780544324039
ASIN:
B00HK3F3NY
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Paul Theroux. (2014). Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories. HarperCollins.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Paul Theroux. 2014. Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories. HarperCollins.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Paul Theroux, Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories. HarperCollins, 2014.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Paul Theroux. Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories. HarperCollins, 2014.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Needs Update?:
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 18:23:32
Date Updated:
Nov 22, 2022 08:48:25
Last Metadata Check:
Apr 21, 2024 10:03:38
Last Metadata Change:
Mar 24, 2024 09:52:10
Last Availability Check:
Apr 21, 2024 10:03:41
Last Availability Change:
Mar 29, 2023 13:31:28
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Apr 25, 2024 02:10:18

OverDrive Product Record

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        PAUL THEROUX is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include The Bad Angel Brothers, The Lower River, Jungle Lovers, 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.

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"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
reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
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        July 7, 2014
        The 20 stories in the 30th work of fiction from Theroux (The Mosquito Coast) grapple with the all-too-human desire for ownership—of art, of people, of places, even of stories themselves. Through his worldly male narrators, Theroux explores matters of taste and the compulsion to ruin a possession to mark it as your own. Even when the characters are not wealthy collectors or Andrew Wyeth protégés, they’re often interested in art in some way. The American accountant in Bangkok in “Siamese Nights,” arguably the collection’s standout, is a gifted caricaturist with a vivid appreciation for his unfamiliar surroundings: in the city’s “moisture-thickened air that made you gasp” and “neon lights shimmering in puddles,” he observes, you learn to see “beauty in half an inch of dirty water.” This tale and others—including “Nowadays the Dead Don’t Die,” about the enactment of African funeral rites—contain notes of Theroux’s famed travel writing. Beyond art and travel, Theroux also explores boyhood in the title story; presents a debauched Hawaiian love triangle in “Neighbor Islands”; works a twist on Maupassant’s classic “The Necklace” in “Another Necklace”; and experiments with first-person flash fiction in two steamy interludes, “Voices of Love” and “Long Story Short.” The final product is a hefty, remarkably diverse batch of stories colored by Theroux’s prolific taste for exploration. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        July 1, 2014

        Without slipping overtly into the realm of "men's lit," Theroux's fiction often grapples with the concept of manhood, with its focus on issues of power, pride, and obsession. The stories in this collection are varied, and some are rich in the details of exotic places, as befits this renowned travel writer; all are highly entertaining--a couple are award winners--with the plot twists and sometimes startling resolutions that mark the best of the short story genre. In one gem, a fabulously wealthy man sets about to systematically destroy the rare artifacts in his art collection; with escalating hubris, he contemplates murdering his exotic girlfriend, whom he treats as a possession, but instead finds the limits of his power. In the titular story, a henpecked husband asserts his position in the family by transforming himself into the minstrel show character he's portraying in a charity performance. A longer piece, in which a conservative accountant working in Bangkok becomes emotionally involved with a "ladyboy," is a study in sexual obsession. VERDICT This excellent new collection allows readers to sample an array of Theroux's most entertaining fiction in short story form; highly recommended.--Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA

        Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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"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...
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