Any Human Heart: A BBC Two Between the Covers pick

This novel is essentially the life story of an Englishman named Logan Mountstuart, born in 1906 and died in 1991. The book begins in 1923 when Logan is a boy enrolled in what we Americans would call high school. He wins a place at Oxford and emerges several years later with a “third” in History. Not an auspicious start but he has an adventurous spirit and begins a writing career, one of several occupations he’ll have during his lifetime. Logan takes a job as a war correspondent and is dispatched to cover the Spanish Civil War where he meets Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gelhorn, and other prominent people. After this war he’s commissioned an officer in the Royal Navy and is detailed to the Bahamas where his mission is to keep close watch on the Duke of Windsor and his wife, Wallace Simpson. He later returns to England and soon has another chance to serve his country as Hitler bombs London and invades various European nations. He parachutes into Switzerland on a complicated spy mission and the operation is a personal disaster. After the war is over, Logan becomes the on-site manager of an art gallery in New York. Logan loves to travel, has romantic adventures with various women whether they are married or not, and meets more luminaries such as Ian Fleming, Pablo Picasso, Evelyn Waugh and Virginia Wolff. Author William Boyd has constructed the book such that Logan is telling the story through his personal journals, sort of a autobiography. Logan is quite honest in jotting down the details of his various love affairs and his emotions surrounding the one true love of his life. He also spends considerable ink in his later years looking back on his triumphs and failures. A TV series adaptation was made of this book in 2010 and starred Jim Broadbent as Logan in his later years. I saw it and recall that it captured the book’s story very well.

I loved this book. It is a beautiful portrait of life, the way fate can change everything, the way you start with dreams and end up with compromise, with all the adventures, regrets, relationships and love along the way. Even though this is essentially a "memoir" there is so much suspense that the book is hard to put down. William Boyd portrayed pain so well, and managed to peel away the intricate layers of a human being with all that person's flaws. Throw in the backdrop of the second world war and all the real-life characters (the Duke and Duchess of Windsor etc etc) and invented characters so real you think you've read about them before, and you have a fascinating slice of history.I think this book is one of my all time favorites. Bravo, William Boyd. LOVED this novel.

I really enjoyed reading the diary of Logan Mountstuart, a most fascinating character created by this author, and one who retains a Zelig-type quality to his very full life. Throughout his action-paced, tragic life he rubs shoulders with literary glitterati and art-world denizens such as Pablo Picasso, Virginia Woolf, Frank O'Hara, Nat Tate, and Ernest Hemingway, suffers a 2-year prison sentence in Switzerland during World War 2 where he's essentially a spy, runs an art gallery in New York, marries several times and loses both of his children at young ages, sides with a radical political group, and writes several books, all while living in London, Algeria, Manhattan, and rural France. I honestly felt as though I was reading a true diary, one that kept my rapt attention at all times. Kudos to author William Boyd for pulling this off!

I began reading this because it got a glowing review. After about half the book, when I was still not loving it, I went to read more reviews on Amazon. What I found was that women were, like me, less than enthusiastic about the book.I had trouble liking the protagonist. His attitudes annoyed me. So, because of him (no matter how well the words are written) the story just didn’t appeal to me.

I loved this book. Written like a true biographical journal of the often tumultuous life of Logan Mounstuart. William Boyd did an excellent job portraying the life of a young English man in college, his time during the war, his many relationships until his death in his 80s. It was a very captivating read and I look forward to reading more of his novels.