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!
Rating:
Summary: A real treasure to read!
Review: I loved this book! Any Human Heart is a real treasure to read, and totally ambitious in its scope. Following the trials and tribulations of Logan Mountstuart, it jumps through the twentieth century with lightening speed! We are witness to Logan 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. Yes - he isn't a particulary honorable character, but this is what makes Logan so appealing. He's a flawed human being, like the rest of us, and he makes his fair share of mistakes in life. I loved this incredible backdrop of twentieth century life that Boyd has constructed around this character, the personalities that he meets on the way - Virginia Woolf, Edward and Mrs Simpson. And I loved the fact that the story spans so many continents - Europe, America, Africa etc. A great novel, and I'm looking forward to picking up more of Boyd's works. Michael
Rating: 
Summary: Any Human Heart
Review: I was not familiar with William Boyd's work and picked up this novel because it sounded intriguing. It is an exceptional book, managing to be at once a moving personal story, a brief (and often funny) history of the arts and politics of the 20th century, and an examination of a society in decline. The protagonist's meetings with historical characters, from Picasso and Hemingway to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, are surprisingly convincing and never seem like a "gimic." I found the second half of the book somewhat less convincing than the first, and I got rather tired of the hero's obsession with his [physical] life, but all in all--a great read. I will look for more William Boyd.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific
Review: In Any Human Heart, William Boyd manages to create a not entirely likeable character, Logan Mountstuart, who nonetheless is an entirely sympathetic protagonist. Logan is not the nicest person in the world. He manipulates friends for his own amusement, sleeps with one of his closests friend's fiance, and commits a number of other, minor atrocities. Yet for all Logan's badness, I missed him when I finished the novel and throughout, I found myself rooting for his finding some semblance of happiness. Logan is entirely human in the sense that his story indeed could be the story of any human heart--any British heart is probably more like it. He manages to come in contact with quite a few notables from the twentieth century and reinvents himself and his career many times over. Perhaps no one lives a life as rich as Logan, maybe so. But that still does not take away from the fact that Any Human Heart is a terrific novel, excellent storytelling. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Life is "the aggregate of [your]good luck and the bad luck"
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: Boyd is one of the world's greatest living story tellers.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Full and Finished Life
Review: The diary follows the life of the narrator and all of it holds your interest. It was his life, but it was also everyone's journey, although most of ours are not so full of adventures. Thororghly enjoyable, although a little prejudiced as I always enjoy Mr. Boyd's works.
Rating:
Summary: Buffeted by Chance
Review: This is a 500 (or so)-page fictitious diary of a man from the start of his adult life to his death, containing imprints of his experiences in England, continental Europe, America, Africa and France. The big insight you get out of this: how much you lack control over your life. When you're young, you have optimistic thoughts of the future, unduly intensely colored, as such thoughts are, by the influence of hormones and the camaraderie of youthful friends. Little do you know (and even less can you control) what lies ahead. Logan Mounstuart graduated from Oxford determined to be a writer and to write books of consequence. Then, his lover spurned an offer of marriage, his subsequent marriage fell apart, he found temporary happiness in a second marriage but was sent off to fight in WWII, during which he ended up in solitary confinement for two years. As he rotted in Swiss prison, nursing an insect farm to keep himself from going nuts, his wife, notified that he was dead, remarried and then was killed in an explosion. He received hints that the assignment that landed him in solitary confinement was a set-up engineered by a Duke who had it in for him. He came back and attempted to carry on, but he was never able to build up to a cadence. After several twists, which included overseeing an art gallery as the urge/ability to write slowly petered away, a marriage to an American lawyer, a sexual relationship with an underage woman, sinking into such desperate poverty that he had to turn to eating dog food, a stint teaching in Africa, he ended up broke and mostly alone in France, where he died. In this "diary" is the story of a person whose life was controlled by events outside his control. There is something about British fiction in particular that I love - it assumes the essential "losership" of humanity and then queries what a person can eke out despite this. In other words, the Big Issue is resolved: The world is emphatically not your oyster. Ultimately, you (or humanity) won't amount to much -- but more importantly, pen-ultimately, you (the person) are beaten. Life and its accidents will likely "get" to you, whether or not you plan otherwise. There is general truth to the notion that most of what you can achieve is out of your control. Now that you know this, how do you live your life - what do you do with this depressing information? I find the answers to this question eternally fascinating. Anyone with a similar bent will like this book. However, I should note that while the portrait of life led by LMS is neither pretty nor optimistic, it doesn't leaving you wallowing in negativity or pessimism either: If you accept the premise that much of life is determined by chance/accident, then achieving what LMS did -- writing a few books, teaching, having some adventures, occasionally getting intensely close to a lover -- is not so shabby a set of achievements.
Rating:
Summary: Any Human Heart
Review: This is my second biggest disappointment in reading this summer, the first being Graham Swift's "The Light of Day." Boyd's first novel since the marvelous "Armadillo," "Any Human Heart" reads like a sandwich (albeit a gourmet sandwich) without the meat. Like "The New Confessions," which focused on the movie industry, this term-of-the-century novel takes its hero, an ecrivain manqué, from his childhood in Uruguay, to his young boyhood at a British public school, through a number of ill-fated (and deadly boring) love affairs, to his interment as a spy in Switzerland (!) during World War II, to a teaching stint in Nigeria, and his unfortunate flirtation with the Baader-Meinhof gang. There's considerable scope here for comedy of the type Boyd excels in, but little is made of the opportunity. Logan Mountstuart is basically a whiner, a man born into privilege who blows every chance he has (and they are many) to succeed. He writes a couple of popularly well-received novels (one is deemed by critics a "nastily unpleasant little shocker") early in his career then fails to produce for the next forty to fifty years. I liked Logan best as a Stalky-like schoolboy, replete with a small cabal of geek friends, who learns he doesn't know as much as he thinks he does, about girls and football, among other things, and as an old gent living in London, who discovers that dog food, while it may not be gourmet fare, can be a suitable substitute in times of need. The story ends in France, where Logan makes one last, quixotic gesture in the name of love, and falls once again on his face. If you're looking for a superior examination of the writer's craft, try Anthony Burgess' monumental "Earthly Powers," or Penelope Lively's brilliant cameo, "Moon Tiger." There is much to like about "Any Human Heart," including some exquisite descriptive prose, and I certainly recommend it, especially to fans of Boyd, but if you're waiting for another work of comic genius like "Stars and Bars" or "A Good Man in Africa," be patient. We all know Boyd has it in him.
Rating:
Summary: A sandwich without the meat
Review: This is my second biggest disappointment in reading this summer, the first being Graham Swift's "The Light of Day." Boyd's first novel since the marvelous "Armadillo," "Any Human Heart" reads like a sandwich (albeit a gourmet sandwich) without the meat. Like "The New Confessions," which focused on the movie industry, this term-of-the-century novel takes its hero, an ecrivain manqué, from his childhood in Uruguay, to his young boyhood at a British public school, through a number of ill-fated (and deadly boring) love affairs, to his interment as a spy in Switzerland (!) during World War II, to a teaching stint in Nigeria, and his unfortunate flirtation with the Baader-Meinhof gang. There's considerable scope here for comedy of the type Boyd excels in, but little is made of the opportunity. Logan Mountstuart is basically a whiner, a man born into privilege who blows every chance he has (and they are many) to succeed. He writes a couple of popularly well-received novels (one is deemed by critics a "nastily unpleasant little shocker") early in his career then fails to produce for the next forty to fifty years. I liked Logan best as a Stalky-like schoolboy, replete with a small cabal of geek friends, who learns he doesn't know as much as he thinks he does, about girls and football, among other things, and as an old gent living in London, who discovers that dog food, while it may not be gourmet fare, can be a suitable substitute in times of need. The story ends in France, where Logan makes one last, quixotic gesture in the name of love, and falls once again on his face. If you're looking for a superior examination of the writer's craft, try Anthony Burgess' monumental "Earthly Powers," or Penelope Lively's brilliant cameo, "Moon Tiger." There is much to like about "Any Human Heart," including some exquisite descriptive prose, and I certainly recommend it, especially to fans of Boyd, but if you're waiting for another work of comic genius like "Stars and Bars" or "A Good Man in Africa," be patient. We all know Boyd has it in him.
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