William Boyd: Sweet Caress, Bloomsbury UK, 9781408867976

Before I start telling you about “Sweet Caress”, William Boyd’s most recent novel, I have to confess that “Any Human Heart” is on the shelf of my all-time favorite books.  He is one of my favorite contemporary authors, a master storyteller  and whenever a new novel by him is published, I race out to get my hands on it. (Apart from his latest James Bond novel)  Lucky me – he was published by Penguin for many years and then moved to Bloomsbury, two publishers I represented in Germany for many years and therefore was privileged to get my hands on early proofs. 

If you are looking for a female version in the footsteps of “Any Human Heart”, you will find it in “Sweet Caress”, seen thru the lens of Amory Clay, a photographer. It is a tour de force through the 20^th Century and such a wonderful book – I feel sad it is finished now , wanted it to go on for a while longer than the 448 pages it already has. 

Amory Clay is a fictional character but I found myself researching her name in Wikipedia, the idea to place  photos of events and people in the book make her novel life sound so very  real.  Very clever idea, some of the characters Amory meets, like in Any Human heart, are real and Boyd lists them in “Acknowledgements”.  From Amory’s birthday in 1908 up to her death, she memorizes her life as an elderly person in 1977 living in Scotland, with her thoughts trailing back in chronological order to times gone by.  You feel like you are sitting in her living room listening to her life story.

There are the damaged souls returning from WWI during  her childhood , her father in particular, her photographer uncle Grenville who is responsible for putting the first camera in her hands  with whom he shares a special emotional bond , her years in London as his apprentice taking photographs of socialites for fashionable magazines,  the Berlin of the late Twenties  and New York in  the Thirties, her run in with Black shirts in London  altering her life forever , and finally  becoming one of the few female WWII  photographers  until life has another major change in store for her .  Amory’s taste for adventure and her curiosity is always greater than her fear as she tries to pursue her life's  dream, her recollections of her love life and relationships are some of the best parts of the book.

English fiction at its very best   - thank you William Boyd for such a great story and a follow up to Any Human Heart!  I cannot wait to see what he is up to next.