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Customer Reviews of The Consul's File

I know of Theroux through his wonderfully minimal little horror tale The Black House; seems most people know him for travel writing. This is something of which I was previously unaware, but I became well acquinted with it while reading this book, a loose collection of stories about the life of an American consul sent to Ayer Hitam (in Malaysia) to close down the consulate there. (As a side note, Ayer Hitam is now a forest preserve maintained by the University Putra Malaysia, and dropping by UPM's website to take the photo tour lends a whole other perspective into reading this book.)

Theroux's hapless protagonist spends his time cataloguing the odd folks to be found in and passing through Ayer Hitam, and Theroux's strength lies mostly in characterization. The population of Ayer Hitam (equal parts indigenous, Tamil, and Chinese, with a smattering of British expatriates) is the stories' real focus, and a number of them come to life in the stories dedicated to them. Not terribly much actually goes on there, but these aren't plot-driven stories anyway.

Good stuff if you like character portraits, but if you're looking for more of a plot, other Theroux works might be a better jumping-off point. ***

Twenty Short Stories from Malaysia
In this 1978 compilation, Paul Theroux offers twenty stand-alone (and originally serialized) chapters told through the eyes of a young American consul posted to a small Malaysian town in the 1970s. The stories are chronological picking up when the narrator arrives in country and ending with a letter he writes as he departs. The expatriate society, with its clubby Brits, drunken eccentrics, casual racism, missionaries, and scoffing credulity of local beliefs will be recognizable to readers of Graham Greene, John LeCarre, and Joseph Conrad, but Theroux's descriptions are typically evocative: characters draw themselves (among the most memorable are the chameleon novelist in "The Coconut Gatherer", the Japanese tennis player in "The Tennis Court, and the medicine man in "The Tiger's Suit"). The tropical air provides a uniform backdrop of heat, jungle smells, and exotic strangenes. The narrator neither condescends to the locals nor judges the expatriates, he merely observes in a dry prose that can sometimes be the most powerful criticism of all. Finally, in the last chapter's private letter (perhaps the book's strongest pages) he comments at length on Squibb, the club bore, "He had failed at being a person, so he tried to succeed at being a character". Squibb is not alone.

Theroux, perhaps best known for "The Mosquito Coast" and a host of wonderful travel journals, displays in these early stories a sincere voice, non-judgmental and full of wonder at seeing the new and exotic. "The Consul's File" is short and insightful. Worthwhile.

The best book about Foreign Service life
Theroux's Consul's File is perhaps the most evocative book about what its really like to be in the foreign service. The episodic nature of the story matches the life and work, even at larger posts. The sequel "London Embassy", does not work quite as well, but is still worthwhile.