Reviews
You like reading right? Of course you do, if not then why are you reading this? In fact you most probably love reading so much, that you’re forced to sink so low as reading barcodes in the supermarket. You’re the person who reads all the credits after a film (and not just to point out the funny sounding names). You’ve reread the washing label on that jumper you’ve got on so many times, it’s starting to look like the one legendary copy of Jugs stashed in the school library. God forbid the day the ink finally rubs off and with no other option, you’re forced to read the advertising posters on the tube.
But what do you like reading most? What’s your favourite thing, or genre, or style? Crime? Fantasy? Romance? Non-Fiction? Celeb Mag? Fast Paced? Slow Paced? It doesn’t matter. Whatever you like to read, with Any Human Heart William Boyd provides you with everything. Everything you want, and everything you don’t, on every single page.
Any Human Heart is exactly what the title says it is. (If you know the longer, fuller title Any Human Heart: The Intimate Journals of Logan Mountstuart). It’s the lifelong journal of one man. Born to a Brummie corned beef pioneer and his Ecuadorian secretary, Logan’s paper imprisoned thoughts are captured the moment he learns to hold a pen. After he moves to Birmingham from his native Ecuador in his early teens, the journal begins during his final year of boarding school.
From 1906 – 1991, Logan’s life spans the best part of the past century. Throughout which he manages to become part of all major events therein. With his experiences of history captured, we are presented with these unknown times in a more personal, more intimate context. Throughout his life, he talks expertly on living as part of the Bloomsbury set and strikes in London, he lives in Paris, experiencing the influx of Americans over the 1930s, writes articles on the Spanish Civil War, has two espionage style James Bond inspired (literally) spy adventures in the Caribbean and the supposedly neutral Switzerland, he owns and runs an avant garde art gallery in 1960s New York, and even has time to put his Navy spy training to use again, this time for an 80s hardcore terrorist cell.
The book takes us through all of these important times, shaping our view of history and of ourselves, but we start off with a boy, a boy having experienced none of these. The similarities and the differences between young Logan Mountstuart and the old man taking on all night stake-outs into his 80s, are as common, and as stark as those between him and us. This is a personal history book. It is Hitler’s diaries, it is James Joyce’s notebook, Pablo Picasso’s sketches, Ernest Hemingway’s cigar, Ian Fleming’s top secret missions, Virginia Wolf… what did she do again?
It is all this. It is the ultimate Centurial edition of Heat Magazine.
Yet still, it remains truthful, and believable. At times it takes a bit of a leap to think one man (you’ve never heard of) can have met and befriended all of these famous literary and artistic figures of the past century, however even this in itself is a credit to the believability of the text, as it only becomes so absurd when you wonder why the name Logan Mountstuart doesn’t ring as clear as Pablo Picasso, or Andy Warhol. The reason of course, is Logan Mountstuart isn’t real. At the end of the book, that takes some believing.
Any Human Heart - William Boyd - Brought to you by James Wormald -