Any Human Heart

by William Boyd | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0141009284 Global Overview for this book
Registered by Mytilus of Plymouth, Devon United Kingdom on 6/25/2005
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3 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by Mytilus from Plymouth, Devon United Kingdom on Saturday, June 25, 2005
Great read.

Amazon.co.uk Review
Logan Gonzago Mountstuart, writer, was born in 1906, and died of a heart attack on October 5, 1991, aged 85. Any Human Heart is his disjointed autobiography, a massive tome chronicling "my personal rollercoaster"--or rather, "not so much a rollercoaster", but a yo-yo, "a jerking spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit child". From his early childhood in Montevideo, son of an English corned beef executive and his Uraguayan secretary, through his years at a Norfolk public school and Oxford, Mountstuart traces his haphazard development as a writer. Early and easy success is succeeded by a long half-century of mediocrity, disappointments and setbacks, both personal and professional, leading him to multiple failed marriages, internment, alcoholism and abject poverty.
Mountstuart's sorry tale is also the story of a British way of life in inexorable decline, as his journey takes in the Bloomsbury set, the General Strike, the Spanish Civil War, 1930s Americans in Paris, wartime espionage, New York avant garde art, even the Baader-Meinhof gang--all with a stellar supporting cast. The most sustained and best moment comes mid-book, as Mountstuart gets caught up in one of Britain's murkier wartime secrets, in the company of the here truly despicable Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Elsewhere author William Boyd occasionally misplaces his tongue too obviously in his cheek--the Wall Street Crash is trailed with truly crashing inelegance--but overall Any Human Heart is a witty, inventive and ultimately moving novel. Boyd succeeds in conjuring not only a compelling 20th century but also, in the hapless Logan Mountstuart, an anti-hero who achieves something approaching passive greatness.

Released 18 yrs ago (8/3/2005 UTC) at Hudson's Coffee Shop OBCZ, St Andrews Cross. in Plymouth, Devon United Kingdom

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Journal Entry 3 by Hudsons-Plym from Plymouth, Devon United Kingdom on Monday, August 8, 2005
Caught to Plymouth Hudson's OBCZ.

Journal Entry 4 by NOBONES from Gunnislake, Cornwall United Kingdom on Wednesday, September 14, 2005
I caught this 'full-circle' of a book in a coffee house I had just discovered.
The book happenned to be lying on the table next to me, and I though it was too good to leave behind if no one else was going to claim it!

The book was an excellent read, charting the life of one man who led an extraordinary life, without particualrly realising it, until he almost reaches the conclusion of his own existance.

An efortless transition between literature and journalism was particualrly effective and interesting especially as my life also revolves around those two spheres.

The 'story', composed through diary entries, was very real, and at the end it is odd to finally realise that the protagonist was no more than a fictional character. It seems impossible that the author could have created the effective and exciting character, that is Logan Mounstuart.

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