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Review
Timoleon Vieta is 'the finest breed of dog... a mongrel', his owner, Cockcroft, an ageing composer of popular tunes, best known for the theme to children's programme Bibbly and the Bobblies. Cockcroft has long retired, to a ramshackle villa in Umbria, where he lives off his royalties and entertains a succession of handsome young lovers (few of whom stick around for long). Enter the Bosnian, who Cockcroft met briefly in Florence and invited to stay, more in hope than expectation. His English is as bad as Cockcroft's Italian, and Timoleon Vieta takes an instant dislike to him. The feeling is mutual, and soon Cockcroft has to choose between the two. It is a difficult choice, but, since the Bosnian pays for his board and lodging in sexual favours, it is Timoleon Vieta who must go. Abandoned in Rome, he roams the streets, living off scraps, encountering various characters - a heart-broken Welsh woman; a professor of Italian history, his young Chinese wife and her daughter; a deaf girl. Meanwhile, Cockcroft, consumed with regret, pines for his loyal pooch, and howls the night away in pain. As if hearing his master, Timoleon Vieta makes his way home, to a showdown with the Bosnian. The increasingly fractured narrative of this slight tale allows for thumbnail sketches of many people's lives, and for Dan Rhodes to show off his knowledge of different countries and cultures (Italy, Wales, China, Cambodia). Yet, in spite of the odd, touching moment, the overall effect is one of indifference, while the understatement of the prose seems enforced by the writer's literary limitations rather than the product of any stylistic choice. Early in the book, Cockcroft berates his fellow ex-pats who, having moved to Umbria, knock out lazy travelogues with titles like 'Olive Oil and Sunset', 'Bruschetta and Botticelli' or 'Cracked Walls and Chianti', 'all more or less the same with very similar anecdotes about botched DIY and meetings with their comical Italian neighbours'. Perhaps Rhodes is pre-empting criticism of his own, less than satisfactory contribution, which, for all its pan-global colour, does much the same in fictional form. Perhaps the incoherent parade of disadvantaged and dispossessed characters serves some deep symbolic function. Then again, perhaps not. (Kirkus UK)
A taste for rough trade and an inclination toward bestiality lead the parade of perverse charms that trudges through this impishly outre first novel. In an arch voice that intermittently resembles those of James Purdy and Ronald Firbank, British author Rhodes (Anthropology, stories, 2000) charts the mood swings that overpower his protagonist, a disgraced composer and former bandleader who calls himself Carthusians Cockroft, and now lives in the Italian countryside (Tuscany) in a seclusion punctuated only by a succession of live-in male lovers and by the presence of Cockroft's beloved dog Timoleon Vieta, a soulful mongrel distinguished by its "irresistible" golden eyes. (If there's any explanation of why man and beast bear these fey, cumbersome monikers, it's not forthcoming.) A semblance of a plot develops when Cockroft takes in another stray, a handsome, semiarticulate drifter known only as "the Bosnian" (who, however, "had never even been to Bosnia and wasn't sure he would be able to find it on a map"). In exchange for board and rent, the Bosnian performs assorted household repairs (and weekly oral sex), but proves to be incompatible with the equally temperamental mutt, which he persuades Cockroft to abandon on the unfamiliar streets of Rome. The remainder of the story crisscrosses among revelations of Cockroft's scandal-plagued past and of the Bosnian's true ethnicity and identity (both actually rather neat surprises) and the adventures of Timoleon Vieta on the prowl, complete with "backstories" for the several people the dog encounters during an instinctive journey homeward that eventually connects the novel with its (acknowledged) inspiration: Eric Knight's sentimental classic Lassie Come Home. Rhodes's tale has its amusing moments, but it's sabotaged by inexcusable amounts of redundancy and padding, by the promiscuous deployment of characters and motifs that disappear and reappear quite arbitrarily, and by a creepy and really quite callous surprise ending. Rhodes has been acclaimed as one of England's most promising young writers. No comment. (Kirkus Reviews)
The Observer Life Magazine
One of '5 Best Debuts for 2003'
See all Product Description
Timoleon Vieta is 'the finest breed of dog... a mongrel', his owner, Cockcroft, an ageing composer of popular tunes, best known for the theme to children's programme Bibbly and the Bobblies. Cockcroft has long retired, to a ramshackle villa in Umbria, where he lives off his royalties and entertains a succession of handsome young lovers (few of whom stick around for long). Enter the Bosnian, who Cockcroft met briefly in Florence and invited to stay, more in hope than expectation. His English is as bad as Cockcroft's Italian, and Timoleon Vieta takes an instant dislike to him. The feeling is mutual, and soon Cockcroft has to choose between the two. It is a difficult choice, but, since the Bosnian pays for his board and lodging in sexual favours, it is Timoleon Vieta who must go. Abandoned in Rome, he roams the streets, living off scraps, encountering various characters - a heart-broken Welsh woman; a professor of Italian history, his young Chinese wife and her daughter; a deaf girl. Meanwhile, Cockcroft, consumed with regret, pines for his loyal pooch, and howls the night away in pain. As if hearing his master, Timoleon Vieta makes his way home, to a showdown with the Bosnian. The increasingly fractured narrative of this slight tale allows for thumbnail sketches of many people's lives, and for Dan Rhodes to show off his knowledge of different countries and cultures (Italy, Wales, China, Cambodia). Yet, in spite of the odd, touching moment, the overall effect is one of indifference, while the understatement of the prose seems enforced by the writer's literary limitations rather than the product of any stylistic choice. Early in the book, Cockcroft berates his fellow ex-pats who, having moved to Umbria, knock out lazy travelogues with titles like 'Olive Oil and Sunset', 'Bruschetta and Botticelli' or 'Cracked Walls and Chianti', 'all more or less the same with very similar anecdotes about botched DIY and meetings with their comical Italian neighbours'. Perhaps Rhodes is pre-empting criticism of his own, less than satisfactory contribution, which, for all its pan-global colour, does much the same in fictional form. Perhaps the incoherent parade of disadvantaged and dispossessed characters serves some deep symbolic function. Then again, perhaps not. (Kirkus UK)
A taste for rough trade and an inclination toward bestiality lead the parade of perverse charms that trudges through this impishly outre first novel. In an arch voice that intermittently resembles those of James Purdy and Ronald Firbank, British author Rhodes (Anthropology, stories, 2000) charts the mood swings that overpower his protagonist, a disgraced composer and former bandleader who calls himself Carthusians Cockroft, and now lives in the Italian countryside (Tuscany) in a seclusion punctuated only by a succession of live-in male lovers and by the presence of Cockroft's beloved dog Timoleon Vieta, a soulful mongrel distinguished by its "irresistible" golden eyes. (If there's any explanation of why man and beast bear these fey, cumbersome monikers, it's not forthcoming.) A semblance of a plot develops when Cockroft takes in another stray, a handsome, semiarticulate drifter known only as "the Bosnian" (who, however, "had never even been to Bosnia and wasn't sure he would be able to find it on a map"). In exchange for board and rent, the Bosnian performs assorted household repairs (and weekly oral sex), but proves to be incompatible with the equally temperamental mutt, which he persuades Cockroft to abandon on the unfamiliar streets of Rome. The remainder of the story crisscrosses among revelations of Cockroft's scandal-plagued past and of the Bosnian's true ethnicity and identity (both actually rather neat surprises) and the adventures of Timoleon Vieta on the prowl, complete with "backstories" for the several people the dog encounters during an instinctive journey homeward that eventually connects the novel with its (acknowledged) inspiration: Eric Knight's sentimental classic Lassie Come Home. Rhodes's tale has its amusing moments, but it's sabotaged by inexcusable amounts of redundancy and padding, by the promiscuous deployment of characters and motifs that disappear and reappear quite arbitrarily, and by a creepy and really quite callous surprise ending. Rhodes has been acclaimed as one of England's most promising young writers. No comment. (Kirkus Reviews)
The Observer Life Magazine
One of '5 Best Debuts for 2003'
See all Product Description
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