Any Human Heart [Hardcover]

William Boyd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 4, 2003

The author of Armadillo, The Blue Afternoon and Brazzaville Beach—the novelist who has been called a “master storyteller” (Chicago Tribune) and “a gutsy writer who is good company to keep” (Time)—now gives us his most entertaining, sly and compelling novel to date, a novel that evokes the tumult, events and iconic faces of our time, as it tells the story of Logan Mountstuart—writer, lover and man of the world—through his intimate journals.

Here is the “riotous and disorganized reality” of Mountstuart’s eighty-five years in all their extraordinary, tragic and humorous aspects. The journals begin with his boyhood in Montevideo, Uruguay; then move to Oxford in the 1920s and the publication of his first book; then on to Paris (where he meets Joyce, Picasso, Hemingway, et al.) and to Spain where he covers the civil war. During World War II, we see him as an agent for Naval Intelligence, becoming embroiled in a murder scandal that involves the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The postwar years bring him to New York as an art dealer in the world of 1950s abstract expressionism, then on to West Africa, to London (where he has a run-in with the Baader-Meinhof Gang) and, finally, to France where, in his old age, he acquires a measure of hard-won serenity.

A moving, ambitious and richly conceived novel that summons up the heroics and follies of twentieth-century life.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Logan Gonzago Mountstuart, writer, was born in 1906, and died of a heart attack on October 5, 1991, aged 85. William Boyd's novel Any Human Heart is his disjointed autobiography, a massive tome chronicling "my personal rollercoaster"--or rather, "not so much a rollercoaster", but a yo-yo, "a jerking spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit child." From his early childhood in Montevideo, son of an English corned beef executive and his Uraguayan secretary, through his years at a Norfolk public school and Oxford, Mountstuart traces his haphazard development as a writer. Early and easy success is succeeded by a long half-century of mediocrity, disappointments and setbacks, both personal and professional, leading him to multiple failed marriages, internment, alcoholism and abject poverty.

Mountstuart's sorry tale is also the story of a British way of life in inexorable decline, as his journey takes in the Bloomsbury set, the General Strike, the Spanish Civil War, 1930s Americans in Paris, wartime espionage, New York avant garde art, even the Baader-Meinhof gang--all with a stellar supporting cast. The most sustained and best moment comes mid-book, as Mountstuart gets caught up in one of Britain's murkier wartime secrets, in the company of the here truly despicable Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Elsewhere author William Boyd occasionally misplaces his tongue too obviously in his cheek--the Wall Street Crash is trailed with truly crashing inelegance--but overall Any Human Heart is a witty, inventive and ultimately moving novel. Boyd succeeds in conjuring not only a compelling 20th century but also, in the hapless Logan Mountstuart, an anti-hero who achieves something approaching passive greatness. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly

Surely one of the most beguiling books of this season, this rich, sophisticated, often hilarious and disarming novel is the autobiography of a typical Englishman as told through his lifelong journal. Born to British parents in Uruguay in 1906, Logan Mountstuart attends an English prep school where he makes two friends who will be his touchstones for the next eight decades. The early entries in his journal, which record his sexual explorations and his budding ambitions, provide a clear picture of the snobbery and genteel brutality of the British social system. Logan is a decent chap, filled with a moral idealism that he will never lose, although his burning sense of justice will prove inconvenient in later years. He goes down from Oxford with a shameful Third, finds early success as a novelist, marries a rich woman he doesn't love, escapes to Spain to fight in the civil war and is about to embark on a happy existence with his second wife when WWII disrupts his and his generation's equilibrium. He's sent on a na‹ve spying mission by British Naval Intelligence and imprisoned for two years. On his release, he finds that tragedy has struck his family. Logan's creativity is stunted, and he slides into alcoholism, chronic infidelity and loneliness. "I believe my generation was cursed by the war," Logan says, and this becomes the burden of the narrative. He resorts to journalism to earn a living, specializing in pieces about the emerging stars of the art world, whom he encounters-somewhat like Zelig-in social situations. Logan's picaresque journey through the 20th century never seems forced, however. His meetings with Picasso, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Hemingway and Ian Fleming are adroitly and credibly interposed into the junctures of his life. This flawed yet immensely appealing protagonist is one of Boyd's most distinctive creations, and his voice-articulate, introspective, urbane, stoically philosophical in the face of countless disappointments-engages the reader's empathy. Logan is a man who sees his bright future dissipate and his great love destroyed, and yet can look back with "a strange sense of pride" that he's "managed to live in every decade of this long benighted century." His unfulfilled life, with his valiant efforts to be morally responsible, to create and, finally, just to get by, is a universal story, told by a master of narrative. Boyd, back in top form, has crafted a novel at least as beautifully nuanced as A Good Man in Africa and Brazzaville Beach. Logan's journal entries are so candid and immediate it's difficult to believe he isn't real. And after 496 pages, it's hard to say good-bye.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (February 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375414932
• ISBN-13: 978-0375414930
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 5.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #295,840 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Boyd is the author of ten novels, including A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Any Human Heart, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet; and Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life is "the aggregate of [your]good luck and the bad luck", February 4, 2003

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Any Human Heart (Hardcover)

Life, as understood by Logan Mountstuart, is a series of random events, not events which are fated, controlled by a higher power, or the result of carefully made decisions. There's nothing and no one to blame for whatever good or bad luck we may have in life. A person may choose to enjoy the good times, seek out happiness wherever possible, and live life to the fullest or sit back passively and just endure whatever happens. Logan Mountstuart is one of the former types, a man who recognizes that "Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary--it is the respective proportions of those categories that make life appear interesting." But Mountstuart also believes that one can look for and find the extraordinary within the ordinary.

Through his personal journals, begun in 1923, when he is seventeen, and continuing to the time of his death in 1991, we come to know Mountstuart intimately, both as an individual, growing and changing, and as an Everyman, someone who participates in and is affected by the seminal events of the 20th century, after World War I. Because he is a writer, he is able to travel and to know other writers and artists of the period. When he meets Aldous Huxley, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Cyril Connolly, Evelyn Waugh, and Ian Fleming, the reader has the vicarious fun of being there and meeting them, too, since Mountstuart, as a person, appears to be very much like the rest of us. He buys early paintings by Paul Klee and Juan Gris, and Pablo Picasso draws a quick portrait of him and signs it. He engages in intellectual discussions about Braque, Picasso, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Bloomsbury group and keeps the reader aware of literary and artistic achievements of the era.

It is in his depiction of the historical moment that Boyd shines. By describing events through Mountstuart's experience, he is able to give a human face to people and circumstances which have influenced our history, and his choice of small details, often unique, offers a new slant on some familiar events. Boyd is particularly good at showing simultaneous events--Franco at the gates of Barcelona while Hitler is entering Prague--and his explanation of Neville Chamberlain's giving up of the Sudetenland resonates as an honest and even logical attempt to avoid the desperation of war. When Ian Fleming, who works for the Secret Service, gets Mountstuart a job in Naval Intelligence, the reader is introduced to the colorful world of the Duke of Windsor, as Mountstuart "spies" on him to make sure that the Duke's German sympathies do not make him a pawn of the enemy. Post-war, Mountstuart continues to be involved with the world of artists and writers--and world events--eventually living in Nigeria before retiring to France.

For the reader the book is a fast read, despite its length, filled with personal stories and colored by world events. Mountstuart's belief that life is just the aggregate of one's good luck and bad luck--that things simply happen--leads, of necessity, to a story which is not organized by a hidden, underlying theme. Befitting its philosophy, it is episodic and random, using the passage of time as its primary framework. Mountstuart himself accepts what happens to him, though it often saddens him, and does not agonize over what he might have done differently--he does not believe that he could have changed things. In that regard he remains one-dimensional, in many ways an Everyman for the history of the times. Fun to read, the book offers a new "take" on events which have shaped our own times, offering no lessons for the future, other than to live life, despite its ups and downs. As Mountstuart himself points out, life ultimately is a yo-yo, "a jerking spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit child." Mary Whipple

62 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boyd is one of the world's greatest living story tellers., June 18, 2003

By 

C F Taber (Atlanta, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Any Human Heart (Hardcover)

Once again William Boyd has produced a jewel. His ability to bring true history into a novel is totally unmatched. But even Boyd has outdone his last few publications with "Any Human Heart," not since "Brazzaville Beach" has he written such a page turner. This book flows effortlessly from cracking good tale to tragic reflection. His creation of this heroic character Logan Mountstuart left me crying at certain points in the book, and I can assure you I have never done that while reading a book before. Boyd uses a diary as a vehicle to detail the facts and emotions of Logan's life, and this adds to the drama, suspense and pain of his story.

If you have the time and you are looking for a summer assignment, go to the book store and purchase William Boyd's library. Read them in any order you like. But if you are looking for one excellent example of this writer's genius, then Any Human Heart is a great place to start. I cannot recommend any book more highly.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars culmination of boyd's awesome career, February 17, 2003

By 

john (los angeles, ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Any Human Heart (Hardcover)

this novel is so brilliant, so swiftly paced and poetically composed, i can hardly do it justice. i have read (and taught in university courses) Boyd's books over and over again down the years (a fav is The New Confessions) and Any Human Heart rates right up there with the best work he's done. there's a real melancholia evident here--so those who are looking for the hilarity of such early works as A Good Man in Africa or On the Yankee Station are gonna be puzzled a tad. Logan Mountstuart is a great creation...so pleased, especially as i didn't like Armadillo and The Blue Afternoon--despite the fact that, with Ian McEwan, Wm Boyd is my favorite contemporary novelist. get this as soon as you can...