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Timoleon Vieta Come Home A Sentimental Journey Dan Rhodes 9780156029957 Books

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Timoleon Vieta Come Home A Sentimental Journey Dan Rhodes 9780156029957 Books

Dan Rhodes is brilliant at compact prose. He's able to distill in the most concise fashion, elements of a story that will hook and reel the reader in just two sentences into the story. His debut collection of micro-fiction, "Anthropology" is a fine example, as is his follow-up short-story collection "Don't Tell Me the Truth About Love". In the novel "Timoleon Vieta", the main story seems simple enough - a has-been British composer Cockroft living in idyllic isolation in Italy finds a dark, handsome stranger on his doorstep and finds his life overtaken by this new boarder with a sinister background. Timoleon Vieta is the name of his faithful dog with the most beautiful eyes one has ever seen.

When the master foolishly chooses the handsome stranger over the dog and abandons him in Rome, Timoleon Vieta, ever faithful, fights to find his way home. On his long and treacherous journey, he encounters (sometimes not even very significantly) an assortment of individuals, and this is really where Rhodes show his flair for getting under the skin of characters and their stories in a short space. In a sense, Rhodes has cleverly tucked a series of short-stories into this novel. What is poignant about these stories is the way the reader is made to feel and care for these characters but has to abandon them to run along with Timoleon Vieta as he hurries home.

But perhaps Rhodes's talent for the short form overrides the main story here, because while we come to love the feisty little dog, the plot ends in an undeniably shocking but (to this reader) senseless manner, which felt like a letdown. Or perhaps, the pointlessness of some quests is precisely the point Rhodes is making, as one comes to learn and love about his open endings in other novels like "Gold".


Tags : Timoleon Vieta Come Home: A Sentimental Journey [Dan Rhodes] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div>Cockroft, a faded composer and socialite, lives in self-imposed exile and fantasizes of true love and extravagant suicides. Rattling around his dilapidated farmhouse in the Italian countryside,Dan Rhodes,Timoleon Vieta Come Home: A Sentimental Journey,Houghton Mifflin,0156029952,Composers,Dog owners,Dogs,Dogs;Fiction.,Exiles,Fables,Human-animal relationships,Human-animal relationships;Fiction.,Italy,Rejection (Psychology),Rejection (Psychology);Fiction.,FICTION General,FICTION Literary,Fiction,Fiction - General,Literary,Popular English Fiction

Timoleon Vieta Come Home A Sentimental Journey Dan Rhodes 9780156029957 Books Reviews

This will probably be a short review, as I'm going to try hard not to include any spoilers. This book is about a dog who finds himself far from home and tries to get back. And then again, it's not. The dog becomes a device for letting us peek into the lives of the people whose paths he crosses the old man who owns and loves him, the young woman whose lover cheated on her, the boy whose heart was broken by a gentle girl, even a little girl in Cambodia who sees the dog only in a photo of her sister, and more. The sub-stories are all tragic, yet darkly funny. The overarching story of the pathetic old man, his dog, and the mysterious stranger, known only as The Bosnian, who comes between them is the darkest of all.

Did I mention this book is dark? Well, it is. It's also quite well written and intriguing and, in some places, funny, as only dark stories can be. If you're not afraid of the dark (yes, it's very dark), you should find it a satisfying read.

Other reviewers have guided people to Dan Rhodes' book of 101 short stories (each containing exactly 101 words) called Anthropology as a less-dark example of his incredible talent. I have to agree. I read that book and, although some of the stories there are also tragicomic, at least they're only 101 words long. Seemed less dark to me. So if you are afraid of the dark, read that one. It's like Dan Rhodes with a night light.
I've just finished Timoleon Vieta Come Home, and I feel I've been very gently, gently shaken until my teeth rattled. Though it is humor, this is not a book for a merry gambol. It's going to mess you up; depend on it. Yet it has the tone and flavor of a gentle frolic, disguising its very black worldview in the sorts of details and stylistic points one might generally classify as "amusing."

I found myself loving this book, which follows tendrils of plot, as an abandoned dog makes his way back home to Umbria from Rome, touching the lives of various characters around Italy. Don't worry -- it's not touching in that droopy, learn-how-to-feel sort of way. One of the stories is about a sister of someone who once photographed the dog. It's that tangential. And yet the idea of the book is firm and strong throughout, though the plot seems to wander so randomly along every branch of Timoleon Vieta's ramble.

The book is about damage, and the short distance between being damaged just enough to be real, and being damaged too much, hopeless. The difference between what ruin is romantic, and strange, and lovable, and what is too far gone, too messed up, unredeemably horrific. In some ways, it's brutal, this book, but in its heart it's also powerfully true. The cradle hovers over the abyss, and the difference between love and loss is a step, a flaring match, a couple of chromosomes, or a misunderstood folktale.
Dan Rhodes is brilliant at compact prose. He's able to distill in the most concise fashion, elements of a story that will hook and reel the reader in just two sentences into the story. His debut collection of micro-fiction, "Anthropology" is a fine example, as is his follow-up short-story collection "Don't Tell Me the Truth About Love". In the novel "Timoleon Vieta", the main story seems simple enough - a has-been British composer Cockroft living in idyllic isolation in Italy finds a dark, handsome stranger on his doorstep and finds his life overtaken by this new boarder with a sinister background. Timoleon Vieta is the name of his faithful dog with the most beautiful eyes one has ever seen.

When the master foolishly chooses the handsome stranger over the dog and abandons him in Rome, Timoleon Vieta, ever faithful, fights to find his way home. On his long and treacherous journey, he encounters (sometimes not even very significantly) an assortment of individuals, and this is really where Rhodes show his flair for getting under the skin of characters and their stories in a short space. In a sense, Rhodes has cleverly tucked a series of short-stories into this novel. What is poignant about these stories is the way the reader is made to feel and care for these characters but has to abandon them to run along with Timoleon Vieta as he hurries home.

But perhaps Rhodes's talent for the short form overrides the main story here, because while we come to love the feisty little dog, the plot ends in an undeniably shocking but (to this reader) senseless manner, which felt like a letdown. Or perhaps, the pointlessness of some quests is precisely the point Rhodes is making, as one comes to learn and love about his open endings in other novels like "Gold".