Book description
Any Human Heart is William's Boyd's classic, bestselling novel, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time.
Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart's - lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century - contains more than its fair share of both.…
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Why read it?
1 author picked Any Human Heart as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
What I loved about this book is that Boyd does what I would never do. He writes as if it were a journal in which the writer, like the reader, doesn't know what will happen next. It's like going on a journey without a set plan.
There are beautifully idiosyncratic descriptions of now famous, then unknown literary figures – Evelyn Waugh, Hemingway, etc. – told in a natural 'course of conversation,' not a name-dropping way, and catty asides shedding light on characters like Virginia Woolf and her racism. Boyd is very good at describing feelings and attitudes and the way…
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Hemingway's Goblet is a rollicking read about a mismatched relationship between a middle-aged commitment-phobic university professor in London and one of his female students, a Korean 15 years younger than him. He is accused of sexually harassing her, but somehow their relationship survives as they join forces to seek to…
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