Any Human Heart by William Boyd
Who would like this book? Mature readers (i.e. older folks or younger readers who are curious) who are interested in the sweep of the twentieth century through the eyes of a cosmopolitan “man of the world.”
Why? Boyd constructs his novel through the lens of the intimate journals of Logan Mountstuart. Mountstuart begins his journals by reflecting on his boyhood in Uraguay; skips quickly to his life as a young man in London in the 1920s; continues with his adventures in Paris, the Bahamas, Switzerland, New York, London, and Africa; and ends with his death in France in 1991. As a writer and art dealer, he crosses paths with many well-known people (Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming, Picasso, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor) as he seeks to make a meaningful life and to find some peace. His loves and his adventures are tragic and entertaining, in turn. The books begins with this inscription: Never say you know the last word about any human heart. ~Henry James
Any Human Heart goes a long way to disprove this axiom, for it lays out Mountstuart’s heart in an intelligent and compelling story.
Details: 498 pages (including an index – I’ve never seen an index in a fiction book before!); 2002