LOVE IS BLIND

WILLIAM BOYD

Viking, 371pp, £18.99, Oldie price £12.84 inc p&p

For DJ Taylor in Literary Review, the devil of this novel is in the detail at the expense of the plot, which simply ‘crashes on’. In an effort to maintain his reputation, Boyd indulges in a ‘minute and nighrapturous absorption in detail’, ranging from intricate descriptions of what his main female protagonist, Lika, is wearing to ‘meticulously documented’ recitations of the meals eaten. ‘There is sometimes a sense of research being overzealously unpacked,’ he concluded, waspishly, while insisting the book is

‘The devil of this novel is in the detail at the expense of the plot’

nevertheless ‘hugely entertaining’. Alexander Larman in the

Guardian had only praise for this ‘beautifully written and deeply humane account of its protagonist’s journey through a specific historical period: fin-de-siècle Scotland, France and Russia’. For Laura Freeman in the Times, the main problem was Boyd’s obsession with breasts. There’s ‘heavy breasted’ Senga, the ‘dark brown nipples’ of a Spanish girl in a Paris brothel, Lika with her ‘small, heavy breasts’, and the ‘wide flat breasts’ of yet another hapless female character. For both Freeman and Johanna Thomas-corr, writing in the Evening Standard, Lika simply ‘never takes life’. ‘Brodie is blinded by love,’ wrote Freeman. ‘But what does he love about her? She is dazzling – what else? If Lika had been more fleshed out – forget about cup size – it would be easier to understand why Brodie goes to the ends of the earth for her love. As it is, she is a blindingly beautiful, rather boring woman, with really great breasts.’