Any Human Heart

Logan Gonzago Mountstuart, writer, was born in 1906, and died of a heart attack on October 5, 1991, aged 85. William Boyd's novel 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 Uruguayan 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 story is also a reflection of a British way of life in 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 novel's most compelling moment occurs mid-book, as Mountstuart gets caught up in one of Britain's murkier wartime secrets, in the company of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Boyd occasionally uses satire, notably with the Wall Street Crash, but overall, Any Human Heart is a witty, inventive and ultimately moving novel that conjures a vivid picture of the 20th century, with a memorable anti-hero.