or, the Life of Logan Mountstuart Writ Large.
Bad Aspects out of the way first:
This book is written in a journal format over the course of Mountstuart’s life. As my suggested subtitle reads, sometimes I wondered whether AHH didn’t unnecessarily glorify the protaganist’s shortcomings. Inevitably, the book does drag in places and I confess that I may have merely skimmed three or four pages somewhere toward the end.
Luckily I desisted in this. The last fifty odd pages, to me, bore witness to the unravelling and ending of a life in such a moving and authentic fashion that I was almost reduced to tears.
Based solely on this effort, its’ Author, William Boyd, is a genius. We follow Mountstuart from his youth and MS narrates the whole way. But by the end, the voice we hear is that of an old man, rather than the youth whom we met at the beginning. This is not a revelation to the reader, Boyd seems to have captured the subtleties of aging rather nicely – to put it how our friend Mountstuart may have.
Now, I am aware of critics who would disagree with this and, with respect, I think it has more to do with some kind of animosity toward the protaganist, rather than a true objection to the tenor of the book. Of course, MS is upper class, and English, and well off, at least for the most part. His later deprivation is fleeting and there may be something in the view that his struggles, as made out, were not really struggles it all. In his darkest days, for example, MS dresses and says to himself “thank God I had a good tailor”.
But really, this is wishy washy nonsense. This book is one life, it makes no claim to represent humanity. MS’s life does give the reader advantages: he mingles with real and imagined literati over a century and I have enough annotations in my notebook to fill a year of reading. MS lives his life in an entertaining and thought provoking fashion. Though retrospective discussion throughout was filled with a clarity fitting to the perusal of a journal, MS poignantly asks “How can something that never existed haunt you”?
Outlaw Rating: 4.3/5. (need to keep some kind of a grade here)
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