Paul Theroux, the bestselling novelist, travel writer and “master of the short story”  in The Vanishing Point, gives us an exotic but domestic, ranging from Hawaii to Africa and New England. Each focuses on life’s vanishing points – a moment when seemingly all lines running through one’s life converge, and one can see no farther, yet must deal with the implications. With the insight, subtlety, and empathy that has long characterized his work, Theroux has written deeply moving stories about memory, longing, and the passing of time, reclaiming his status, once again, as a master of the form.

“I lost most of my hair, many of my teeth, my arm strength, my mojo,” notes Theroux. The wilderness of old age feels like a fitting destination for an octogenarian novelist  who has made a career out of exploring extremes.

Theroux’s assortment of shorter fiction coalesces into an illuminating survey of the humiliations, consolations and revelations involve in the process of ageing, also highlighting the joys and frustrations of reading late-period Theroux.

The story is about professional and romantic disappointments of Guy Petit, a placid handyman in rural Maine who wants nothing more than a stocked bookshelf, a selection of socket wrenches and the “rapture of solitude”. Guy who is well read and admirably frugal works as a studio assistant for Elliott stangerm a painter in the Mark Rothko mould, whose works feature flat panels of colour, stripes and circles. Guy bobs along the river of his life, often getting the short end of the stick, is innocent buffeted by the whims of others who, in his sunset years, realises that he “had never thought of happiness as a goal but only of the contentment of having enough”.  Guy’s modesty, and wisdom will lead him to an ending he deserves. It is a tale in which maintenance and consistency triumphs over ambition and change.

The next stories with three sections, Hawaiian backdrop, south-east Asia, Africa,  a series titled “Aide-Memoires”, which explains key moments in the life of novelist Andre Parent, Theroux’s historical alter ego with snapshots of a rowdy boyhood summer camp, a visit to a carnival stripper, an elegiac chess game. Theroux has a queasy authorial fascination with young prostitutes.  His men remain emotionally distant while his women are either nagging wives or service providers to a “carnal itch”. His wrinkly protagonist  “ Surf bunnies” and “bosomy” teenagers. 

A charmed life takes an unexpected turn into the supernatural with a fable about a man blessed or cursed with the ability to shape fate.

There are few female characters in the collection, for instance, stories like “Adobo,” “Love Doll,” and “A Charmed Life” exoticizing, objectifying, and often killing off women of colour. In “ A Charmed Life” the narrator becomes infatuated with an “ideal” woman because of how good she looks doing manual labour. Readers with octogenarian family members may know exactly what it is like to listen, to someone whose age and life experience lends them both a certain insight and a certain insensitivity.

The Vanishing Point by Paul Theroux, Hamish Hamilton £20/ Harper Collins $30, 336 pages.