Indeed, at times the rawness of these letters threatens to expose a Naipaul more human than we might want to believe. Naipaul's friend and contemporary Paul Theroux published a memoir in 1998 about their rocky relationship since the two met in Africa in 1966. Theroux's depiction of Naipaul's egoism and reputation for being difficult is only confirmed by Family Letters. Cynical about the intellectual capabilities of his fellow Oxonians, close to very few people at the university, Naipaul comments to his sister, "It is difficult to exaggerate the dangers of a place like Oxford--the retarding influence it has on people: the sexually unbalanced and the plain neurotics."

Still, such details only add to the power of the book as an intensely truthful memoir, and the selections often bring home the emotion of certain events in a fashion that is admirably heightened by the book's particular form. When the elder Naipaul dies, the first indication we get of the tragedy is Vido's frantic wire home, "He was the best man I knew stop everything I owe to him be brave my loves trust me." Vido's urgent need to connect with his family upon hearing the news comes through clearly in the wire, even as we get a sense of how sudden the event was.

If there is any flaw in Family Letters, it is that the book can be tedious; as selective as this collection is, 300 pages of correspondence inevitably contains repetition and a host of everyday trivialities. And the very selectiveness of the book itself can be problematic. With many letters missing in between the ones printed here, at times the book can be confusing in alluding to events or past comments of which we are not aware.

Still, these are hardly enough to merit a severe criticism of the book as a whole. Letters are an anomaly in the age of information technology; how many times have we heard the complaint that letter-writing has become a lost art? This book is a testament to the intimacy that a two-line e-mail could never replicate. For devotees of Naipaul's work, Family Letters provides a fascinating portrait of an artist as a young man that could not be captured in any other way.