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Blinding Light
A Novel
by Paul Theroux
A once-popular writer travels to Ecuador where he finds a hallucinogenic drug that cures his writer's block--but renders him blind in the process--in the latest novel from the author of "The Mosquito Coast."
Houghton Mifflin, 448 pages
06/01/2005
$26.00
ISBN: 0618418865
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Booklist Donna Seaman
Theroux's greatest powers reside in his detailed and sensuous descriptions, and he is positively dazzling here as he calls forth a vivid world not of sights but of scents, sounds, and touch. So all-consuming does this sexy, gothic fable and searing social critique become, it itself serves as a mind-altering substance. [1 Mar 2005, p.1103]
Chicago Tribune Paul Baumann
Theroux's powers of observation are as acute as ever, as is his relish for humbling irony.
Los Angeles Times Tom Miller
Theroux maintains tight control over his novel's twists and turns, although there's a bit too much of both near the end. [3 Jul 2005, p.R12]
San Francisco Chronicle Stephen J. Lyons
Expect no overriding moral lesson in Blinding Light. Instead, there is one last, eye-opening journey that any intrepid travel writer would gladly make.
Library Journal Misha Stone
Theroux writes with assurance here as he captures his narcissistic protagonist's heedless spiral into addiction and delusions of grandeur. [1 Apr 2005, p.89]
Publishers Weekly
Theroux's language is typically vivid and lush when describing the Ecuadorian jungle. On the whole, however, his prose is repetitive, and Steadman is uncongenial, his fate after a year of substance abuse all too predictable.
The Observer Adam Mars-Jones
It is a curiosity of Blinding Light that it treats at epic length a subject at odds with epic: the writing life.
Chicago Sun-Times Mark Athitakis
The brilliance in Blinding Light is in Theroux's ability to depict how what looks like genius from inside the rabbit hole of intoxication often appears sad or comic outside it. [29 May 2005]
The Independent Julian Evans
If only the sexual autobiography that resulted from it were not so obviously a repetitive and uncompelling catalogue, maybe that could also interest us.
The Independent James Urquhart
What remains is a strong, urgent narrative well worth reading for the zest of Theroux's descriptions alone, but which declines from a stimulated high of expansive promise to a hollow, unfulfilled conclusion.
The New York Times Book Review Hari Kunzru
These failures of tone blot what is otherwise an enjoyable and worldly allegory of the pitfalls of literary success, which retains some of the grandeur of its model.
The Spectator D. J. Taylor
Whatever else may be said of Paul Therouxâs fiction, he has never run short of good ideas, and Blinding Light positively thrums with Maughamesque narrative bounce.
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Stephen Burn
Theroux is a gifted writer, and there are many memor-able passages and much deft description here, but, as a whole, the novel is uneven. The first half of the book is better than the second, and the brief conclusion, with several strands of the plot left hanging, dispels much of the narrative momentum established earlier in the novel.
Washington Post Peter D. Kramer
While the romantic scenes are overwrought, the passages that read like travel memoir are sharp, funny and convincing.
Kirkus Reviews
Blinding Light fails to dazzle, or even illuminate.
The Onion A.V. Club Scott Tobias
It doesn't help that the backstory sounds infinitely more fascinating than the story.
The Observer James Buchan
The effect, alas, of the book-within-a-book is to give the reader second helpings of all Theroux's most unhappy literary effects.
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Dave Williamson
In Blinding Light, Theroux attempts to walk a narrow path between the sublime and the ridiculous, the insightful and the hilarious. He strays off that path a bit too often. This could have been a funny take on a one-book author who goes to crazy extremes to find inspiration; instead, it's a curious treatment of what folks in the sixties used to call a bad trip. [22 Oct 2005]
 The average user rating for this book is 2.5 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
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