Well, this book is aptly titled. I must confess that possibly Boyd is not the genius I proclaimed him in an earlier post. Bored and in need of some novel to read I drove, last night, through the heavy rain and traffic to the city (university) library. I had with me a detailed list of books that I would like to read. As so often happens, when one arrives at the library the list goes out the window and the search for something new, something discovered by oneself, is initiated. Of course, I did cheat because I have heard of Boyd.
So, what was the problem? Well, starting at the start (the usual process) I noted that the book said something like “This is the story of a life…” Alarm bells were ringing. Was this Any Human Heart in different garb? I embarked on the sort of page flipping extremity usually reserved for magazines that one wants to read out of order, possibly to extend the experience.
Anyway, from what I could piece together in this fashion, the story was indeed very similar. Some arty guy, in this case, I think, a filmaker, and later an author, travels around, meeting, greeting and living his life. It is conceivable that this in fact is a good book. If you really enjoy these biography type reads then you may enjoy this.
I noted that this book was win fact written some years before AHH and it is likely that Boyd has a sort of life tale theme. Thats cool, in and of itself. I am just not sure this particular type of theme is meaty enough to carry an entire body of work (As opposed to, say, Paul Auster, who we’ll came to).
Anyway, the other point is that I think in AHH Boyd has reached the epoch of his own particular style. My opinion of AHH has not changed since perusing The New Confessions. So, in much the same way I have read exactly 100 million Asimov stories, merely because he is Asimov, fans of Boyd may enjoy this book.
Outlaw rating: 2/5 (3 if you’re a Boydian).
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.