PENGUIN Any Human Heart: A BBC Two Between the Covers pick

Not often I have a few tears on finishing a novel. This one drew me in and I really enjoyed the journey. Wonderful book. Wonderful writing.

Excellent writing. A roller coaster of a book that totally engrossed me. Just when you might be flagging there is another twist or turn that captures the attention. Needed distracting and this book did it for me!

Probably the finest book I have ever read. Yes, the first 50 odd pages are boring, but do trust me that it is all worth it in the end. Literary history marvel. I generally love William Boyd's books, but this one is the best.

Certain trouveront peut-être la vie de Logan Mountstewart un peu trop romanesque et elle l'est, avec les bonheurs et les aléas d'une longue vie dont peu d'événements nous restent cachés puisqu'il s'agit ici d'un journal ou plutôt de journaux écrits par LM à différentes périodes de son existence, selon ses lieux et ses périodes de vie, passant de l'adolescence aisée en Angleterre aux dernières années vécues en France.Refermer le livre, c'est comme dire adieu à un ami cher avec lequel nous aurions partagé quelques joies, ri aux larmes parfois et que nous aurions plaint à d'autres mais toujours émus par la personnalité foncièrement honnête de Logan, son amour de l'art et sa difficile quête d'une vie heureuse qui fasse sens à ses yeux. LM traverse le vingtième siècle les yeux grands ouverts sur lui-même et ses contemporains et parvient à faire de ses journaux son chef-d'oeuvre posthume qui ne lui rapportera pas la notoriété tant désirée à d'autres moments de sa vie mais qui nous le montre enfin apaisé au soir de son existence. Un livre à dévorer puis à méditer.

Bravo. Any Human Heart tells the life story in diary form of novelist and literary critic Logan Mountstuart (1906-1991), a likable and roguish hero. We live through his marriages, dalliances, literary success and frustrations, good decisions and bad, and his successes and failures. He is afforded good luck and bad (as he might put it). He meets an entertaining array of prominent 20th Century figures including Hemingway, Picasso, Evelyn Waugh, Frank O'Hara, Jackson Pollock, Virginia Wolff, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, James Joyce and others, which is tremendous fun (all of these figures are convincingly portrayed and none suffer through gratuitous cameos).Mountstuart's life comes to include many genres -- spy, adventure, romance, marital drama, historical drama -- and what you get in the end is the mix of half-successes, failures, fantasies, longings, intrigues and relationships good and bad that comprise lives, and that in this case come together as quite a moving story. It was pleasant and enlightening to share 70 years with Mountstuart; when it's over, one misses his company. Mountstuart is not a romantic figure with grand, world-changing goals, but he has his set of standards and tries to uphold them over time. The credo he adopts in the Spanish civil War has two hates and three loves: hatred of injustice, hatred of privilege, love of life, love of humanity, love of beauty. He describes the spirit of the Cosmopolitans, a French school of pre-WWI poets about whom Mountstuart writes his third book, thusly: "They are all about romance, about life's excitement and adventure and its essential sadness and transience. They savour everything both fine and bittersweet that life has to offer - stoical in their hedonism." It is the spirit in which Mountstuart lives his life.Boyd's literary style is elegant but not flashy, just right for the diary form. The evolving voice of the character at different ages is totally convincing, as is Boyd's evocation of a diverse set of places and times. As Mountstuart says, "You cannot live on caviar and foie gras every day: sometimes a plain dish of lentils is all the palate craves, even if one insists that the lentils come from Puy." Well said.I loved it, read it quickly and now feel lucky to have found a great new (to me) author.