At the start of this year I had a week in bed with tonsillitis, feeling generally rubbish/bored/sorry for myself. It's times like this that I seek comfort in my choice of reading - nothing new or too challenging. Like an old faithful friend, I found myself reaching for Any Human Heart by William Boyd.
I first read this novel about 3 years ago after seeing the excellent adaptation on Channel 4, and I've re-read it every year since, usually at about this time of year. There's something about the story of Logan Mountstuart that inspires and motivates the reader - as he himself exclaims: "Still, carpe diem. Of all people, I should be living by that axiom."
We're first introduced to Logan as a boy of six growing up in Montevideo, Uruguay. His life - and writing - encompasses the majority of the 20th century, from 1906 to 1991. During this time Logan has a habit of finding himself at the forefront of some of the pivotal years of the last century - the halcyon days of university at Oxford in the 1920s, as a successful writer and war correspondent in the 1930s, a betrayed spy and prisoner of war in the Second World War and as an art dealer in hip 1950s New York. En route he meets a slew of famous faces, including Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
The diary format used throughout is compelling and, at times, refreshingly honest. Logan's attitude towards his son, Lionel, makes particularly painful reading. As he lurches from one relationship to the next we may disapprove of Logan's philandering love life, but we're always on his side, willing him to find the happiness he seeks.
There are many very funny moments - whenever Logan's friend Dick Hodge appears I'm ready to laugh. But this is balanced by moments of sadness too - anyone who lives to a good age can expect to experience the death of loved ones, but the Second World War right in the middle of Logan's life shatters his world and things are never to be the same again.
This balance is brilliantly summed up by Logan as he nears the end of his days:
"That's all your life amounts to in the end: the aggregate of all the good luck and the bad luck you experience...Tot it up - look at the respective piles. There's nothing you can do about it: nobody shares it out, allocates it to this one or that, it just happens."
Food for thought as I lay in bed feeling sorry for myself.
This book is highly recommended and remains a firm favourite.
Let me know if you've read the book. What sort of a reaction did Logan provoke in you?
No comments:
Post a Comment