Timoleon Vieta Come Home

Publisher and industry reviews

UK Kirkus review

Timoleon Vieta is 'the finest breed of dog... a mongrel', his owner, Cockcroft, an ageing composer of popular tunes, best known for the theme to children's programme Bibbly and the Bobblies. Cockcroft has long retired, to a ramshackle villa in Umbria, where he lives off his royalties and entertains a succession of handsome young lovers (few of whom stick around for long). Enter the Bosnian, who Cockcroft met briefly in Florence and invited to stay, more in hope than expectation. His English is as bad as Cockcroft's Italian, and Timoleon Vieta takes an instant dislike to him. The feeling is mutual, and soon Cockcroft has to choose between the two. It is a difficult choice, but, since the Bosnian pays for his board and lodging in sexual favours, it is Timoleon Vieta who must go. Abandoned in Rome, he roams the streets, living off scraps, encountering various characters - a heart-broken Welsh woman; a professor of Italian history, his young Chinese wife and her daughter; a deaf girl. Meanwhile, Cockcroft, consumed with regret, pines for his loyal pooch, and howls the night away in pain. As if hearing his master, Timoleon Vieta makes his way home, to a showdown with the Bosnian. The increasingly fractured narrative of this slight tale allows for thumbnail sketches of many people's lives, and for Dan Rhodes to show off his knowledge of different countries and cultures (Italy, Wales, China, Cambodia). Yet, in spite of the odd, touching moment, the overall effect is one of indifference, while the understatement of the prose seems enforced by the writer's literary limitations rather than the product of any stylistic choice. Early in the book, Cockcroft berates his fellow ex-pats who, having moved to Umbria, knock out lazy travelogues with titles like 'Olive Oil and Sunset', 'Bruschetta and Botticelli' or 'Cracked Walls and Chianti', 'all more or less the same with very similar anecdotes about botched DIY and meetings with their comical Italian neighbours'. Perhaps Rhodes is pre-empting criticism of his own, less than satisfactory contribution, which, for all its pan-global colour, does much the same in fictional form. Perhaps the incoherent parade of disadvantaged and dispossessed characters serves some deep symbolic function. Then again, perhaps not. (Kirkus UK)