The Many Lives of Amory Clay by William Boyd (2015)
Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay is rather standard Boyd – which is to say it contains patches of really excellent writing, particularly in the first and last “lives”, and spirals around a few themes which have maybe become a bit too familiar.
The whole construction of the book feels a bit deja vu
In fact, the whole construction of the book feels a bit deja vu: Any Human Heart also concerned a long and picturesque life, throwing one character into many (somewhat unbelievable) historical events; and Nat Tate also followed the theme of real photographs to track a fictional life (though that was a real hoax).
It works somewhat less well than both of those, so I assumed was a precursor – but rather worryingly in fact comes after. I hope Boyd picks it up a bit as in my view he’s really one of the best contemporary writers. Still, individual sections are beautifully done and (to me, at least) the protagonist has a convincing female voice.
As a Nabokov referential-maniac I also wonder if there’s a little Sebastian Knight in this, as one of the books Knight intended to write was based upon a framework of real photographs. Pale Fire is the book Boyd “most wishes he could have written”, so this isn’t perhaps as tenuous as it may seem.