SOURCE: Leader, Zachary. “An Author and His Egos.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4866 (5 July 1996): 22.

In the following review, Leader examines the imaginary and the real-life incidents in My Other Life, distinguishing the significance of the difference between the two.

When “Paul Theroux,” the hero of this “imaginary memoir,” approves what he has written (The Mosquito Coast is the book in question), he pronounces it “strange, true, comic, and unexpected,” terms which apply also to the memoir itself. Theroux continues: “I wanted people to believe it and like it, and to find something of themselves expressed in it.” He wants people to believe and like his writing because it is true, but also because it is not true, since he has succeeded in making it seem true when in fact it is fictional. The mimetic impulse combines with an urge to manipulate or control, not just the reader, who is...