Rating: 
Summary: An extraordinary life in luminous fiction
Review: "Any Human Heart" is a gloriously crafted masterpiece of modern fiction and undoubtedly William Boyd's best novel to date.
The life of fictional character Logan Mounstuart is told in real time through a process of revelation as we trawl through the pages of his pristinely kept personal diary, where trivialities of a deeply personal nature, sometimes revealed in deeply embarrassing voyeuristic detail, are juxtaposed against experiences that mark his accidental collision with 20th Century social history in the making. Without the benefit of hindsight and a false 20/20 vision that an omniscient narrator would have provided, Logan's words are vibrant with currency and charged with a spontaneity and immediacy that guarantees honesty and integrity. As we follow him through his school years, his brush with the Bloomsbury set in England, his experiences during the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War, his mix up in wartime espionage, leading to his sad personal decline and descent into abject poverty as the century draws to a close, we are left with the distinct impression that Logan's lifetime highs and lows are seldom of his own choosing and the insight that it isn't what life delivers but how we deal with its challenges that finally matter.
The novel is also brimful with thrilling episodes - far too many to enumerate - as Logan's career undergoes a series of dramatic transformation - though his scary encounter with the sinister Duke and Duchess of Windsor is easily the most memorable.
Boyd's ultimate coup de grace may lie in his storytelling technique, which reveals an uncommon deftness in keeping Logan always deeply human and ordinary, thus enabling him to tell a story of an extraordinary life and making it utterly believable.
Boyd's prose is sharp, poised, humorous and intelligent. "Any Human Heart" is hence a wondrously literate yet emotionally generous piece of work that glows with resonance recalling great literary giants like Evelyn Waugh. Few fictional writers today manage to find and convey that delicate balance. Boyd has done it. "Any Human Heart" is enduring contemporary literature of the finest quality that deserves to be read and enjoyed by all. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: a literary Forrest Gump bio; it's better than it sounds..
Review: 'Any Human Heart' is the autobiography of a fictitious twentieth century literary character, Logan Mountstuart. Despite his rather dodgy name, this character grows up into a rather interesting man. It is especially his older life when he reflects upon disappointments and the overall value of his life does this book really catch fire - I found it to be most moving.Unfortunately all is not perfect. The author decided to "be cute" by having Logan Mountstuart be personal friends of famous twentieth century characters such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Hemingway, and Virginia Woolf. Some readers might find this to add extra spice to the story. I found it exploitative and totally unnecessary - the book is solid enough. At any rate this Forrest Gump-like diversions really don't spoil this fine book. Bottom line: a very worthy read. William Boyd is in fine form.
Rating: 
Summary: Intermittently brilliant, but overall a mixed bag
Review: A good, sometimes brilliant, effort by William Boyd: a fictional diary spanning the bulk of the 20th centry "written" by a minor British literary figure. I found sections of this novel extremely compelling: the World War Two diaries, the New York diary, and parts of the diaries devoted to his life and education at Oxford in the 1920s. Other sections I found rather ponderous, particularly the latter sections set in Nigeria and France. Since this book is structured in the form of a diary, it lacks the forward narrative drive of a good novel. This isn't necessarily problematic but, to this reader anyway, the book drags toward the end where a novel should be building to its dramatic peak. Still, however, Boyd succeeds in conveying the sense of disillusionment and sadness of growing old and wondering "is that all there is?" Perhaps Boyd's greatest success here is the way he manages to recreate time and place. These "diaries" feel very real and each page comes alive with authenticity. If you're looking for an introduction to William Boyd, better start with an earlier novel of his "The Ice Cream War." For all its merits, "Any Human Heart" is an acquired taste. It requires patience in long stretches, but overall, the effort does reap some rewards.
Rating:
Summary: The curse of war
Review: Any Human Heart, a novel that is written as an autobiography that spans nearly 80 years in the life of Logan Mountstuart, is a hilarious and sophisticated piece of work. It gives us account's of his life from his years in an English prep school, his take on the British social system, his years at Oxford, his marriages, the curse of two wars and their effects on his life, certainly exacerbated by his imprisonment for 2 years during WWII. When he is released to return home - he finds everything changed: his family, his marriage, his country, and his world. Any Human Heart is a tale of lonliness, disappointment, and despair - yet it makes you laugh through your tears.
Well worth the read, even tho it's 500 pages long.
Rating:
Summary: WHAT WAS LEFT OF SOUL, I WONDER
Review: As formula novels go, this one is quite good. The formula here is to deploy the narrator's diaries as a record of his life, with a 'shell' narrator filling in some gaps and rounding the story off after that life has ended, and it is fair to assume from the book's title that we are supposed to relate the events to our own lives. Up to a point, this is quite easy to do. There are two basic threads, his relations with women and his contacts with the great and famous. What is conspicuously missing is anything much about the heart, and anything at all about the soul, although some irony may or may not have been intended when he dies of heart failure. Logan Mountstuart was born in 1906, the year of my own father's birth. The early chapters, about his schoolboy and undergraduate years, set the tone and the style very clearly. His Catholic upbringing seems to have made very little impression on him, in particular as regards sins of the flesh, and his faith drops away early. That neatly closes off any risk of profundity or introspection from that quarter. It is at this stage also that we meet the two, at a stretch three, friends he ever seems to have made in his entire life, and the friendships never descend to any particular emotional or intellectual depth. The women come and go, and the focus is strongly on the physical side of his relationships with them. Even this side is not 'explored' to any extent - it may all have been strictly missionary-position stuff for all the story suggests to the contrary. What is quite clear is that there was only one real love among them, and when that is tragically lost the book comes as near as it ever does to suggesting the grief and anguish that I would have thought any human heart must have undergone, and even that figures very little in the subsequent narrative. Logan has a son and a daughter by his two marriages, and he is admirably candid and convincing in conceding that as far as his son is concerned they had next to no relationship worth the name. For some of us, to have our own children is beyond comparison the greatest experience in living, and to lose a child the nightmare beyond all nightmares. What emotions Logan went through when it happened to him is a matter that we have to read between the lines as best we can. He lived through turbulent times, but this is not the place to look for profound reflections on those. He is present in Spain during the civil war, but it is treated as a backdrop for his encounters with Hemingway and Picasso. We are kept entertained by the depictions of Virginia Woolf, Cyril Connolly, Ian Fleming and others too numerous to mention. The story really caught fire, for me, in the sharply-narrated and genuinely involving tale of his experiences at the hands of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor during his wartime naval service in the Bahamas. It starts to flag a little in the post-war world, and by now you will expect to be told that there is nothing about the nuclear arms race and nothing about the Cuban missile crisis, although Kennedy's assassination gets a fleeting mention. He does, however, go through a rough patch financially, and if you can take the episode of his consequent involvement with the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Army Faction seriously that's more than I can do. The narration never really escapes from the schoolboy mentality with which it begins, but some of the descriptions of the depradations of advancing age on the narrator are genuinely touching. It is all very readable, and needless to say very skilfully written. I would call it a very good potboiler with pretensions, and I have rated it as such.
Rating:
Summary: WHAT WAS LEFT OF SOUL, I WONDER
Review: As formula novels go, this one is quite good. The formula here is to deploy the narrator's diaries as a record of his life, with a `shell' narrator filling in some gaps and rounding the story off after that life has ended, and it is fair to assume from the book's title that we are supposed to relate the events to our own lives. Up to a point, this is quite easy to do. There are two basic threads, his relations with women and his contacts with the great and famous. What is conspicuously missing is anything much about the heart, and anything at all about the soul, although some irony may or may not have been intended when he dies of heart failure. Logan Mountstuart was born in 1906, the year of my own father's birth. The early chapters, about his schoolboy and undergraduate years, set the tone and the style very clearly. His Catholic upbringing seems to have made very little impression on him, in particular as regards sins of the flesh, and his faith drops away early. That neatly closes off any risk of profundity or introspection from that quarter. It is at this stage also that we meet the two, at a stretch three, friends he ever seems to have made in his entire life, and the friendships never descend to any particular emotional or intellectual depth. The women come and go, and the focus is strongly on the physical side of his relationships with them. Even this side is not `explored' to any extent - it may all have been strictly missionary-position stuff for all the story suggests to the contrary. What is quite clear is that there was only one real love among them, and when that is tragically lost the book comes as near as it ever does to suggesting the grief and anguish that I would have thought any human heart must have undergone, and even that figures very little in the subsequent narrative. Logan has a son and a daughter by his two marriages, and he is admirably candid and convincing in conceding that as far as his son is concerned they had next to no relationship worth the name. For some of us, to have our own children is beyond comparison the greatest experience in living, and to lose a child the nightmare beyond all nightmares. What emotions Logan went through when it happened to him is a matter that we have to read between the lines as best we can. He lived through turbulent times, but this is not the place to look for profound reflections on those. He is present in Spain during the civil war, but it is treated as a backdrop for his encounters with Hemingway and Picasso. We are kept entertained by the depictions of Virginia Woolf, Cyril Connolly, Ian Fleming and others too numerous to mention. The story really caught fire, for me, in the sharply-narrated and genuinely involving tale of his experiences at the hands of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor during his wartime naval service in the Bahamas. It starts to flag a little in the post-war world, and by now you will expect to be told that there is nothing about the nuclear arms race and nothing about the Cuban missile crisis, although Kennedy's assassination gets a fleeting mention. He does, however, go through a rough patch financially, and if you can take the episode of his consequent involvement with the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Army Faction seriously that's more than I can do. The narration never really escapes from the schoolboy mentality with which it begins, but some of the descriptions of the depradations of advancing age on the narrator are genuinely touching. It is all very readable, and needless to say very skilfully written. I would call it a very good potboiler with pretensions, and I have rated it as such.
Rating:
Summary: Another brilliant work by Boyd
Review: Boyd is undoubtedly one of our best living writers, and is my favorite writer of fiction. Any Human Heart is quite simply wonderful. Boyd has given us a completely believable diary of a complex, interesting, and flawed man, Logan Mountstuart, who lived through most of the 20th century. Mountstuart's life story is filled with highs and lows, loves, struggles, triumphs, intrigues, and most importantly a resilence of the heart. The story compels the reader to reflect about what's really important in life, as Mountstuart does more and more as the story unfolds. Mountstuart's life is told with great sensitivity and thoughtfulness. Mountstuart experiences many of the important events and changes of the 20th century, and this backdrop adds yet another interesting layer to the story. Boyd's immense talent as a writer lies in his ability to produce great literature through a highly compelling and fascinating story, often with a historical backdrop. Other books by Boyd that are also terrific include The Blue Afternoon, An Ice Cream War, Brazzaville Beach, and The New Confessions.
Rating:
Summary: Another brilliant work by Boyd
Review: Boyd is undoubtedly one of our best living writers, and is my favorite writer of fiction. Any Human Heart is quite simply wonderful. Boyd has given us a completely believable diary of a complex, interesting, and flawed man, Logan Mountstuart, who lived through most of the 20th century. Mountstuart's life story is filled with highs and lows, loves, struggles, triumphs, intrigues, and most importantly a resilence of the heart. The story compels the reader to reflect about what's really important in life, as Mountstuart does more and more as the story unfolds. Mountstuart's life is told with great sensitivity and thoughtfulness. Mountstuart experiences many of the important events and changes of the 20th century, and this backdrop adds yet another interesting layer to the story. Boyd's immense talent as a writer lies in his ability to produce great literature through a highly compelling and fascinating story, often with a historical backdrop. Other books by Boyd that are also terrific include The Blue Afternoon, An Ice Cream War, Brazzaville Beach, and The New Confessions.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Perfect
Review: Gee the reviewers of this book are sparing in their praise. "Quite affecting..." and "All is not wonderful..." What's a poor novelist got to do to please these guys? This book is flat out perfect. I got lost in the story almost from page one and by the time I reached the end I really KNEW Logan Mountstuart. I cried at the end because I didn't want him to leave. His story gave so much and had so much more to give. See! I'm doing it to myself again... What really comes through in this brilliant novel is the courage of the author to have Mountstuart make some dramatically bad life decisions, yet he is still guided by a strong sense of integrity and truth. It makes you want to follow those same guiding principles in your own life. Only the greatest books make you think about how you live your life. This is such a book.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth waiting for!
Review: I have been a William Boyd fan since reading "Brazzaville Beach" (one of my favorite books) many years ago. I think this book is his best work yet. Following Logan Mountstuart's life through his diaries I found myself disliking him at times but yet always appreciating his honesty... and always enjoying his adventures. A page turner from the beginning, I cried at times and was truly sad to finish the book. Fabulous!
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