SOURCE: Stewart, Lucretia. “On the Wrong Side of the Frontier.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5098 (15 December 2000): 32.

In the following review, Stewart offers an unfavorable assessment of Fresh Air Fiend.

Fresh Air Fiend, a collection of pieces written between 1985 and 2000, is an odd, disjointed book, some parts of which reveal Paul Theroux to be a more sympathetic and vulnerable character than might previously have been supposed. Generally, he is an immensely competent writer and often better than competent. He is also extremely prolific: he has written twenty-two novels, eleven books of non-fiction (all of these, except for Sir Vidia's Shadow, travel) and one critical monograph on V. S. Naipaul. But his novels often leave a sour taste in the mouth of the reader, his travel writing can seem mean-spirited; his memoir of his friendship with V. S. Naipaul makes one doubt that he has ever known the meaning of the...