Paul Theroux (The Lower River) strikes a vaguely sinister chord throughout Mr. Bones--a slow menace that builds to creepy denouements and unsettling epiphanies. Middle-aged cosmopolitan narrators return to childhoods burdened with the weight of exceeded expectations and uneasy consciences. Families in slow decline from the status quo of earned or inherited privilege hurtle to the edge of the domestic abyss.
In "Minor Watt," a wealthy entrepreneur and art collector going through a divorce discovers a passion for destroying valuable artifacts, arriving at the fascinating moral stance that "Destroying them meant he was the equal of the person who made them." The family in "Mr. Bones" watches as their father develops a vaudevillian alter ego that is more cruel and flamboyant than his regular self, but also more vital and fascinating. In "Rip It Up," two disenfranchised eighth graders develop a passion for bomb making; instead of following the usual creepy criminal riff, Theroux turns this into a study of the nature of popularity and the essence of what is cool. In "I'm the Meat, You're the Knife," Theroux begins with a former student telling tales to a supposedly beloved teacher as the teacher is in the throes of terminal dementia. The student's stories are increasingly lurid and violent, and the teacher grows frightened. Is this payback for sins of the past? Is the teacher some horrid criminal or is the student's own natural malevolence at play?
Paul Theroux is a master of unspoken and subterranean motivations bleeding their way out into the world in odd and unexpected ways, causing domestic collateral damage at every turn. --Donald Powell, freelance writer