I look enviously at these kids and think about the lives they are living — and will live — and posit a kind of future for them. And then, almost immediately, I think what a futile regret that is. You must live the life you have been given. We just live and history is what we leave behind us… View all 5 comments. Sep 30, J. Kent Messum rated it it was amazing Shelves: great-read , classic , must-read , masterful-stuff , hard-hitting , masterpiece , what-writers-read.
Thick, dense, and sprawling Exceptionally well written, William Boyd has a rare gift for effective and robust prose. It's a masterpiece in every sense of the word. The novel is the life story of an Englishman named Thick, dense, and sprawling The novel is the life story of an Englishman named Logan Mountstuart who was born at the turn of the 20th century and died close to the end of it. Told through journal entries from his early childhood all the way to his dying days, the book is deeply personal and heartfelt.
Eighty-five years on this earth, and Logan experienced enough for several lifetimes. He was well-educated, well-traveled, and by the end of it well-versed in human emotion, conflict, and fallibility.
His paths in life take him all over the world, to places both wondrous and dangerous. Along the way he has many relationships of many different kinds with an array of people. During his travels he comes into contact and rubs shoulders with some of the most famous and notorious names of the century, although he never becomes one himself.
Regardless of what type of genres you typically enjoy, I highly recommend this tale of one man's life lived to the fullest. View all 8 comments. Jan 06, Lee rated it it was amazing Shelves: favourites , ldn , oxbridge. I don't think I've ever mourned the end of a character in quite the way I mourned Logan Mountstuart, tears winding down my temples as I peeled through the last pages in bed last night.
I don't tend to get all that emotionally invested in the things I read sentimental sure, but I typically retain that sense of fictionality "yes, it was very sad when the man stopped drawing the deer " but the way the main body of Any Human Heart is presented as a salvaged journal scaffolded by biographical anno I don't think I've ever mourned the end of a character in quite the way I mourned Logan Mountstuart, tears winding down my temples as I peeled through the last pages in bed last night.
I don't tend to get all that emotionally invested in the things I read sentimental sure, but I typically retain that sense of fictionality "yes, it was very sad when the man stopped drawing the deer " but the way the main body of Any Human Heart is presented as a salvaged journal scaffolded by biographical annotation lends an air of reality that is difficult to bear in mind as a mere artistic effect.
The characterisation is incredibly deft. Logan is somehow by the end a completely different man from the boy he was; somehow completely the same. Boyd's cleverest flourishes, perhaps, are the boring mundane little interludes: descriptions of lunches, the weather. The end-of-year summaries, those caught little reflections. How some people disappear completely without another word on their fate.
How others come back and come back and come back. It's difficult-to-physically-impossible for me to believe LMS wasn't really a real person once. Spent all day at work today missing him; found myself last night thinking I should track down his published fiction. I've read a lot of fantastic novels these past months and this might not be the best, but it feels the most special.
I feel like I learned the most about myself from it. You gotta read this book. Another book I read as part of the project to revisit the Booker longlist - this is another difficult one to assess and review objectively because it covers such a variety of genres and subjects.
The book is the diary of a fictional writer Logan Mountstuart, and covers all parts of his long life from his last year at a minor public school in to his death in France in His life is constructed to cover some fertile fictional territory, but for me never quite coalesced into a coherent Another book I read as part of the project to revisit the Booker longlist - this is another difficult one to assess and review objectively because it covers such a variety of genres and subjects.
His life is constructed to cover some fertile fictional territory, but for me never quite coalesced into a coherent whole or left me caring much about his fate.
It did allow Boyd to research a number of pet interests - the circumstances that inspired Ian Fleming to create James Bond, the New York art scene of the s, the Spanish Civil War, conspiracy theories involving the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Biafran war, the Baader-Meinhof gang and more, and parts of the book are full of encounters with real people.
In the final part view spoiler [ he ends up in rural France and ends up embroiled in a conflict between villagers and the daughter of a supposed hero of the French resistance who abused his position to remove the obstacles to personal gain, and the last third of the book has a rather melancholic elegiac tone very different to the gung-ho adventurism of the first half, but I think this rather cleverly creates doubts about Mountstuart's own veracity.
The craft and the depth of the research are clear enough, and it does have sections that are very good, but overall I felt the book lacked coherence. View 1 comment. The reader comes to know Logan Mountstuart through his lifelong journal entries. There is plenty of name dropping Picasso, Duke of Windsor, Jackson Pollock and plenty of adventure espionage, murder, war and Boyd combines these elements like a symphony.
The ending is one of the most poignant and moving conclusions I have read. I just want to sit with this one in my head for awhile. View all 18 comments. With the opening Henry James quote, I immediately knew this used bookstore find was a keeper. Structured as the collected diaries of Logan Mountstuart, "Any Human Heart" is the story of a life that spanned most of the twentieth century. Because of the format, the style changes as Logan ages, there are gaps in the story when he didn't feel like writing, he can be touchingly confessional one moment and aggressively self-justifying the next.
While he can certainly seem terribly self-involved, lustfu With the opening Henry James quote, I immediately knew this used bookstore find was a keeper. While he can certainly seem terribly self-involved, lustful and selfish, I found myself liking him very much for his honesty and self-awareness. Sure, he only feels guilty about the stuff he does when he is aware of having dropped in someone's esteem, but when he takes a second to look back at some events, he realizes their importance as turning points into what will become a life lived to the fullest.
Watching Logan be shaped by his life is a fascinating process, and I loved the recovered diary format. It captures something very candid about Logan's character that another style would not have carried across as well.
It helped me believe in him and sympathize with him tremendously: I wanted to hold his hands through the tough parts and slap him when he was being a complete jerk. It also makes for a messy narrative at times, with some plot lines going unresolved, but that's what life is like, and I really appreciated the realism. I found myself occasionally forgetting that I was reading fiction! People change, grow, are shaped by their experiences and I feel like Boyd captured this long, slow process beautifully; and Logan's voice made the narrative compulsively readable and entertaining.
He is in turn kind, thoughtless, passionate, pathetic, sad, endearing and frustrating. As are we all when life decides to knock us around. The time at which Boyd decided to place Logan's birth is very clever, because his adult life then covers most of a rather eventful century, and he ends up bearing witness to most of it's significant events and cultural changes as they are happening. His acquaintances with historical figures of all kinds, from fellow writers Woolfe and Hemingway, to the Duke of Winsdor and Picasso himself - are not just pretentious name-dropping: they are simply people he bumped into at one point or another in his life, worked with or wish he'd never met.
He was never as famous or important as them, but he is no less remarkable in his relative anonymity. I feel like this is such a good but quiet book; I found Logan's story moving and strangely comforting, even when it was heartbreaking.
In a way, I think I envy all his mis adventures and wanderings. I remember my grandfather's stories about being in the Franciscan order, then playing semi-professional baseball, then becoming a teacher and a headmaster, and it always seemed to me that people of that generation he was born in , passed away in seem like they had lived 10 lives, as where I sometimes feel like I can barely keep this one from going straight off the rails.
Of course, the book is saturated with Britishness, which I can't get enough of, but it also strongly carried this spirit that life should be lived as truly and as fully as we can because it is inevitably fleeting. I watched the miniseries that aired on the BBC and I also enjoyed it very much, even if a few elements have been changed. A colleague who saw me reading during a break recommended four other books by Boyd, and after "Any Human Heart", I will definitely keep my eyes peeled for more!
Jan 01, Peter Boyle rated it really liked it. Any Human Heart was my final read of , and as it turns out, a very appropriate one. It contains the journals of the fictional Logan Mountstuart, son of a wealthy British businessman, beginning with his account of attending a Norfolk public school. From there the diaries detail his days at university before he slips into a career as a respected writer. Everything seems to come quite easily to our narrator until World War II turns his life upside down.
Along the way Logan crosses paths with sev Any Human Heart was my final read of , and as it turns out, a very appropriate one. Along the way Logan crosses paths with several of the twentieth century's most notable figures. He poses for Picasso, gets hammered with Hemingway and has a few choice words with Virginia Woolf.
Some of these meetings are shoehorned into the narrative and feel like namedropping. But the most credible encounters occur when Logan develops a connection with these people - his uneasy conversations with the scheming Duke of Windsor, for example, are compelling and completely believable. What kind of a person is Logan? Well he's intelligent, ambitious and confident, and he's just as mixed up about this world as the rest of us.
He's also quite the womanizer but I think he's really chasing happiness. When he finally meets Freya, the love of his life, he is exhilarated and overwhelmed: "Freya Deverell.
I have that feeling of heartrace, that bloodheat and breathgasp, just writing her name. If I hadn't lost my passport. If her father hadn't crashed the car and broken his leg. If she hadn't gone to the consulate at that precise hour The view ahead is empty and void: only the view backward shows you how utterly random and chance-driven these vital connections are.
He examines his lot of joy and despair and decides that it wasn't such a bad innings after all. A bit like me at the end of the year, weighing up the good and the not so good, and being thankful for everything I've got.
Few of us will live lives as colourful as Logan Mountstuart - we could all do without his share of heartbreak but his happy days would be the envy of most. Whatever surprises it may bring, I hope my Goodreads pals have a wonderful View all 10 comments.
Aug 08, Chrissie rated it really liked it Shelves: audible , great-britain , read , usa , love , life-stages , france , hf , england. Yeah, I rally liked this book. Maybe it is even amazing. It is about youth, the middle years and aging. Being a child and having children. It is about love, the physical attraction and the emotional one. Logan, the central character, is, a man with strong sexual needs. Some may label him as i Yeah, I rally liked this book. Some may label him as immoral.
Sure, if he were my husband I would be hurt and furious. But who am I to judge another human being? Who am I to say he was bad? Any Human Heart captures the 20th Century. What we are reading is Logan's autobiography based on his private journals. He is who he is; at the same time he is aware of his own weaknesses.
He is at the fringe. There are bits about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor i. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Simon Vance. Not only are his French, English and American accents impeccable, but he also captures voice changes as one ages.
His intonation of the aged Logan is fantastic. Just fantastic. French lines are not translated. But really what makes this book so special is HOW it is written. It is the lines. That is the ingredient that is so hard to define, but which makes or breaks a book. I gave a few quotes below, but to understand how perfect they are you have to read those lines in context. I loved the subtle humor.
That is because they are spoken by Logan, and he is not me. Having read this book I understand Logan and that is why I can smile. A wonderful experience.
Logan is I am laughing and crying simultaneously. Ohhhhhh, the poor man. His diet! Do I dare tell you? He was looking for tinned stew with vegetables. He spotted a tin with the words "plump chucklets of rabbit nestling in a rich dark gravy" A tin of dog food on the wrong shelf! He thought, "If I bought six tins of Bowser, chopped up a carrot and onion and heated the whole thing in a saucepan.
I might have a hearty rabbit stew that would last me a week And very tasty Bowser rabbit stew turned out to be, especially with a liberal addition of tomato ketchup and a good jolt of Worcester sauce. These last components, I would say, are essential for a all dog foods in my experience. Just wait; you will also come to care for Logan. I like this book because of the lines, the way the author has the characters speak or express their thoughts.
Logan, the central character, feels utterly REAL to me. His actions feel so genuine even if I don't happen to like them. I like how history is told through one person's life. The book has a good tempo. It has humor. I like how Logan travels around Europe, zigzagging between England, France and Spain, and we the readers can follow along.
Good stuff. Also, the book is so simple to follow - no time jumps, no mystery puzzles, just a plain good story. A real person's life, that is how it feels. View all 14 comments. Sep 24, Sonya rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , best-ofs.
When you start out, you'll think you might not like this book. The main character is arrogant and, well, young.
But keep going through this fictionalized journal that keeps track of seventy years of a man's life, including his heartbreaks and strongest loves.
Other reviewers bash it for its "Forest Gumpness," yet to me it's not all that unbelievable that an upperclass intelligence officer might have contact with influential persons during one of the world's most tempestuous and active per When you start out, you'll think you might not like this book. Other reviewers bash it for its "Forest Gumpness," yet to me it's not all that unbelievable that an upperclass intelligence officer might have contact with influential persons during one of the world's most tempestuous and active periods in history.
I've read several William Boyd titles now and he has repeatedly shown his ability to invent worlds I like inhabiting. It's a good winter read, fully sad, sweet, and satisfying.
View 2 comments. Mar 15, Jenny Reading Envy rated it it was amazing Shelves: read I first heard of this book from Michael on the Books on the Nightstand podcast , the "favorite" he picked for the Booktopia discussions. I had never heard of Booktopia, a book lovers festival, until after it stopped being held in Asheville, NC, an hour from me. I wanted to sort of play along anyway, and grabbed the two books the four podcasters chose that I hadn't previously read.
This one has sat in my to-read piles for a while and I finally started it when I was looking for something I first heard of this book from Michael on the Books on the Nightstand podcast , the "favorite" he picked for the Booktopia discussions. This one has sat in my to-read piles for a while and I finally started it when I was looking for something I really wanted to be reading. I shouldn't have waited so long! I read the first pages without taking a breath okay, not literally and had to deliberately sit it aside so I wouldn't read it all in a day.
The book is pages long but is written as a succession of journals by Logan Mountstuart, starting from age 17 in to the last few years of his life. He is British so of course that takes him through World War II but not in a typical narrative thank goodness. LMS as he is referred to throughout is a writer but also works for an art dealer, for the government, and other assorted jobs. His journals follow different phases in his life, including different relationships, locations, and significant events.
LMS is not always the most likable of characters, but his voice is so distinctive and realistic that I think it is quite a success as a narrator. As a teen he is brash and cocky, and his elderly years are uncomfortably realistic in the ways he pinches pennies and maintains connections to old friends. The journals vary in tone and focus, just like a real person journals.
When bad things are happening, he either journals drunk or not at all, again, like a real person journals. It made me wish I could keep a consistent journal going! In some ways, while his life is far more expansive, it took me back to Stoner in the reflections on a single life.
He feels real in other ways - the author has sprinkled in historical figures throughout, as well as treating the journals as a primary source with occasional introductory information and footnotes clarifying little bits.
Very readable, I enjoyed the approach, and as this author is an unknown to me, I'm curious to look at his other books. View all 3 comments. I do love William Boyd, but I think I should have read this back in when it first came out because now it feels like meeting up with an old friend that you haven't been in touch with for a while only to find that you have both moved on and no longer have much in common.
Or maybe it suffered from my timing: coming to it after the wild joyride that Ali Smith can can give me, a re-read of Autumn it just seems a little conventional. But then William Boyd doesn't claim to be anything but a 'co I do love William Boyd, but I think I should have read this back in when it first came out because now it feels like meeting up with an old friend that you haven't been in touch with for a while only to find that you have both moved on and no longer have much in common.
But then William Boyd doesn't claim to be anything but a 'conventional' novelist, it's about plot and character. At the time he was, as he claims in this fascinating interview "pushing the boundaries of fiction into the world of the real and the documentary", but hey, now we no longer know where those boundaries are at all so it doesn't seem terribly bold. His Catholicism seems to me to be a complete sham, just like Muriel Spark, another writer I really admire who converted to Catholicism.
Forgive me, I just have a bit of a Muriel Spark bee in my bonnet at the moment. Mar 27, Huw Rhys rated it it was amazing. If you can imagine Johnny English meeting Rolf Harris meeting Forrest Gump meeting Grahame Greene meeting Adrian Mole just after Sue Townshend lost interest in him , then you're not a million miles away from how the plot in this novel is set up.
And although it does contain a lot of banality along with quite a few other weaknesses, this doesn't spoil too much what is a very, very special novel. When I read something that moves me, or resonates very strongly with me, I turn over the bottom of the If you can imagine Johnny English meeting Rolf Harris meeting Forrest Gump meeting Grahame Greene meeting Adrian Mole just after Sue Townshend lost interest in him , then you're not a million miles away from how the plot in this novel is set up.
When I read something that moves me, or resonates very strongly with me, I turn over the bottom of the page of a book. I suppose I have this vague idea that one day I'll go and find all these turned up pages in the books that I've read and I probably turned up more pages in this book than in most of the other books I've read in the past 10 years, put together.
It is just chock full of tasty, golden nuggets. Just comments on life really - but extremely perceptive comments, that really hit home. At odd pages, this does feel like a long book - but it doesn't read "long" at all - in fact, I was enjoying it so much that I rationed myself to small chunks for the last 80 or so pages, just because I didn't want to finish the book. I had the sense of "I'm missing you already" when I finished the last page.
You expect a back story further on, and it never appears, and you can only assume that an earlier reference to that character must have been chopped out by our visceral sub editor.
But then, it's meant to be based on a series of diaries, so maybe the back story would be obvious to the writer Which makes you take it off the shelf again But as I say, the apparent frequent flaws don't actually detract too much from your enjoyment of this terrific story- in fact, the flaws mirror the life of our hero, Logan Mountstuart.
He's no perfect specimen, but then who is? That's one of the many reasons that this book is so good.
One of the rare books that I'll be putting on my "must read again" list. I loved it. I finished the book last night, and did not sleep well. What do I feel? How does one grieve for someone who was not real? Will write up a review after I've had some time to process There is an old adage that what you observe closely you cannot help but love. That is how I feel about Logan Mountstuart. In many ways LMS is an ordinary man who lives in extraordinary times, but he is not the hero of the times he lives in, but rather on the fringes of it.
Yes, he travels widely an I finished the book last night, and did not sleep well. Yes, he travels widely and has encounters with many famous people, but this is really a personal story of one man's life.
One that unfolds through intimate journal entries. We first meet LMS when he is teenager, and follow along on all his mis adventures, loves, and heartbreaks through to his eighties. Such is the skill of the author, that not only did I get to know LMS, but I grew to love him, and when the book ended, it felt like a much beloved great uncle had died. Yes, grief is what I feel. There is a gap in my life that Logan Mountstuart used to inhabit. He will be greatly missed. A word on the audio production.
This story was narrated by the wonderful Simon Vance. The narration is probably the best work by Simon I've heard yet, and that is saying something. He changes the timbre of his narration, so we feel like a young LMS is sharing his secrets with us at the start of the story, and then as LMS ages, Simon's reading gets deeper, more crackly, and elderly.
Simply wonderful. I'm not sure why I waited so long to read this one, and if you have yet to read it, I highly recommend the audiobook. I've got my hands on the TV adaptation, and am delighted to be spending some extra time with Logan Mountstuart.
Nov 28, Bettie rated it it was amazing Shelves: booker-longlist , iceland , washyourmouthout-language , re-visit , fraudio , britain-scotland , historical-fiction , too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts , art-forms , germany.
Fully recommended. View all 19 comments. Dec 07, Stefanie rated it it was ok. Didn't really like it. It's written as a diary, and covers a good chunk of the 20th century. Logan, the diarist, didn't compel me in the slightest, he was flat. Although he experienced some exciting things in his life, from meeting Hemingway and Picasso, to being imprisoned as a spy, I found him boring.
I did read it through, which is something I kept hoping to start caring about him. But I never did. Perhaps it's the diary form that disagreed with me--I think it may be the first of that sty Didn't really like it. Perhaps it's the diary form that disagreed with me--I think it may be the first of that style that I've read. May 15, Roger Brunyate rated it really liked it Shelves: history. One Man's Twentieth Century William Boyd seems to like the panoramic novel, a saga that follows the course of a single character for most of a lifetime, while managing to give a history of a large swath of his century.
I believe he is coming out with a new one in the genre in , this time with a female protagonist, entitled Sweet Caress. Any Human Heart exemplifies both the One Man's Twentieth Century William Boyd seems to like the panoramic novel, a saga that follows the course of a single character for most of a lifetime, while managing to give a history of a large swath of his century.
Any Human Heart exemplifies both the huge strengths of the genre and its weaknesses. For nearly pages, it is marvelous, a page-turner. After that, though still intermittently brilliant, it rather loses focus and momentum. But then so do all too many of our human lives. We first meet him in as a senior at boarding school, preparing for entrance to Oxford.
His two best friends there will stay in touch: one follows in Logan's shoes as a novelist; another becomes an art dealer, and much later will get Logan to run his gallery in New York. Logan himself is an eclectic writer, coming out with books and articles of literary and art criticism as well as a couple of novels. Meanwhile, he meets many of the artistic and social figures of the day: Virginia Woolf whom he could not stand , Hemingway who helps him at a crucial moment in Spain , Picasso who dashes off a quick sketch that later supports him at a bad period , Ian Fleming who gives him an intelligence job in the war , and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor a more complicated story culminating in a true incident that shows the former King in a very bad light.
In many ways, the novel covers much the same ground as the twelve-volume cycle A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell, who also makes a brief appearance in Boyd's novel.
The main difference, other than its briefer and less patrician nature, is the introduction of real figures and events. As one who generally avoids non-fiction, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this quasi-factual element. Logan's voice is honest and attractive, and Boyd's quasi-scholarly "editing" complete with footnotes and even an index is masterly.
So long as events were reasonably continuous, I was hooked. I think I could have done with less of Logan's life as a lover, for although there is true love in there somewhere, he is insufficiently able to control his libido, and exhibits an unerring instinct for sexual self-sabotage. All the same, I was in clear five-star territory until the final third. But then something of Logan's high-flying ability deserts him. During an altercation in New York, someone calls him a loser.
Reflecting on it later, Logan realizing that the term is more of an insult for an American than a European, who normally expects his life to wind down. But looking back, I believe I can see a pattern to my own life, certainly a more or less consistent set of guiding principles. With Logan Mountstuart, however, that is harder, especially as the journals become more spaced out, no longer following a continuum, but tracing a series of mere anecdotes. He spends time in Nigeria at the time of the Biafran war; he crosses paths with the Baader-Meinhof gang; he runs into ugly memories of the German Occupation and French Resistance.
All interesting in themselves—but what happened to the lust for life that carried this splendid protagonist well into his forties? What, alas! I'd been putting this off - or saving it. Either way I had intended to read it on holiday at the end of April, the reason being that I thought it would be a tough book to tackle; not difficult or unenjoyable, but the sort of thing I would need lots of time and proper concentration to really appreciate.
However, a few days ago my Kindle broke and, with nothing else available while I wait for it to be replaced, I decided to get stuck in to Any Human Heart. I soon realised that - as with Fingersmit I'd been putting this off - or saving it. I soon realised that - as with Fingersmith , another one I thought dauntingly lengthy but raced through in a matter of days - I had completely underestimated how readable this book would be.
It's a big, meaty tome, and certainly an intelligent read, but nevertheless it is an incredibly easy book to enjoy.
This journey takes the reader from the mids to the cusp of the s, with so many different international settings I am struggling to remember all of them. There is also an incredible cast of characters, including the many famous names writers, artists etc and public figures most notably the Duke and Duchess of Windsor Logan encounters during his career s. Please note that the tricks or techniques listed in this pdf are either fictional or claimed to work by its creator.
We do not guarantee that these techniques will work for you. Some of the techniques listed in Any Human Heart may require a sound knowledge of Hypnosis, users are advised to either leave those sections or must have a basic understanding of the subject before practicing them. DMCA and Copyright : The book is not hosted on our servers, to remove the file please contact the source url. If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed.
Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to fiction, historical lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Read Online Download.
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