"Any Human Heart" is the edited journals of Logan Mountstuart, 1906-1991, sometime journalist, novelist, spy, art dealer, terrorist associate and flawed human being. It is the creation of the wonderful William Boyd and has shot straight into my all time top ten. Logan Mountstuart starts his journal with schoolboy pomposity at the age of seventeen and by the close of his journals, the end of his life, at a point where the bequest of a house from an old writer friend has saved him from a life of dogfood-eating penury in London, he has reached acceptance and wonder.
His route from one end of life, and the century, to the other is one which brings him into contact with many of the famous names of recent history - he encounters Picasso, Cyril Connolly, Hemingway, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, to name but a handful - and he has brushes with many of its formative events. This slightly Candidesque quality which imbues the novel is one of the things I find fascinating about it; Candide has been one of my favourites since teenage. But I find it astonishing that I am still thinking about the book weeks later and about the character of LMS himself.
In one memorable passage LMS describes his life as “Not so much a rollercoaster — a rollercoaster's too smooth — a yo-yo, rather — a jerking, spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit child”
Now why couldn't I have written that?
It's an extraordinary feat of writing and of invention. I recommend it wholeheartedly.
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