The New Confessions

Overly vigorous and mundane examination of John James Todd (Hey, three first names!) and his various encounters throughout life, from the battlefront in the trenches during world war 1 to his filmmaking attempts to make a nine-hour epic of Jean Jacques Rousseau's the new confessions culminating in him being a victim of McCarthyism. The biggest issue here is that Boyd assumes the reader has an intricate interest in Rousseau's life and the filmmaking techniques he used to make a grandeur epic, but in reality, this took up half the book for me. If I wanted to read about the making of a silent film epic, I would just read production stories of Napoleon (1927), which Boyd was clearly inspired by.

If John James Todd was a fascinating character, all the overwriting could be forgiven, but he isn't lacking the self-awareness you think might have come in abundance during his later years.

Boyd seems to adore writing fictional biographies about people, but based on my personal experiences with this one, I won't be rushing to read them anytime soon.