Any Human Heart

Any Human Heart is expansive in its scope; charting the course of one man’s life across much of the 20th century, this novel has it all - love, loss, sex, war, glamour, destitution, friendship, and more than a little bit of humour. I loved experiencing the excitement and turmoil of the century through Logan’s eyes, and was genuinely sad to say goodbye to him when I got to the end of the book. The intimacy of the diary format works very well as a way to explore the wider events and culture of the century, I really enjoyed that juxtaposition. Boyd’s writing is superb and I was easily and happily carried along on Logan’s journey. Very often I found it almost impossible to put down - the writing flows so well and just pulls you in.

That said, spending 500 or so pages inside someone’s head is quite daunting, and there were points that I got very annoyed with him and found some of his actions a bit predictable and repetitive. For instance, there is a lot of focus on sex - it just got a bit...boring? I also wanted him to be more self-reflective at times; sometimes his character felt frustratingly enigmatic, which jarred with the intimacy of the journal entries. The sheer number of places he lived - London, Paris, New York, Nigeria, the Bahamas, Southern France - also seemed a little far-fetched to me, even for someone born into his privilege. But these are minor criticisms, and not things that took much away from my enjoyment of this sweeping, ambitious novel. I’ll be reading more William Boyd for sure.