Faux- memoir author returns to form

SWEET CARESS by William Boyd Bloomsbury, £ 18.99

WILLIAM BOYD’S latest novel returns to what has become his favoured style: a history of the 20th century, interweaving real and fictional characters and told in the first person.

He used this technique first in his 1987 novel The New Confessions then to great acclaim in his 2002 masterpiece Any Human Heart.

Now, after a run of so- so novels, he has returned to familiar territory to tell the story of the photographer Amory Clay.

Had this been the first time Boyd had written in this style it would be easy to describe it as a masterpiece. As it is, familiarity and a faintly episodic feeling to much of the narrative slightly takes the shine off things. Yet, as ever with Boyd, it’s beautifully written, perfectly paced and moves deftly between poignancy and humour.

The result is his best book since Any Human Heart.

Amory’s story begins in the early years of the 20th century. Her father is a depressed novelist who in one of the book’s most striking vignettes attempts to kill both her and himself by driving his car into a lake.

Thereafter her saga encompasses a range of settings and events such as her accidental involvement in a Blackshirt rally in London in the 1930s, several visits to New York and a love affair with an American publisher and a French writer. There’s also a trip to Vietnam and a visit to Weimar Berlin and a doomed marriage to a Scottish aristocrat.

I especially enjoyed Amory’s gay uncle Greville whom, in a scene rich with black comedy, she attempts to seduce in an ill- fated attempt to achieve her sexual awakening.

When Sweet Caress is adapted for film or television, as it surely will be, the part of Amory will be a gift for a sympathetic actress who is able to bring a depth and poignancy to a figure who occasionally feels like a cypher on the page.

We are told that she is happy, frightened, confused or whatever other emotion she ought to be feeling but sometimes it does not seem a natural response.

Yet if Sweet Caress doesn’t qualify as great literature, it is still a gripping story. A particularly nice touch is Boyd’s use of old photos, even though they bear no relation to the events in the book.

This classy and skilful piece of faux- memoir from a writer so adept at finding the blurred line between fact and fiction ( don’t forget he once wrote a fictional biography of the artist Nat Tate so skilfully that many writers offered their own ‘ memories’ of him) is sure to be as successful as Boyd’s other bestselling books.