• Any Human Heart

  • A Novel
  • By: William Boyd
  • Narrated by: Simon Vance
  • Length: 15 hrs and 58 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (611 ratings)

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Any Human Heart  By  cover art

Any Human Heart

By: William Boyd
Narrated by: Simon Vance
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Publisher's summary

Best-selling author William Boyd—the novelist who has been called a “master storyteller” (Chicago Tribune) and “a gutsy writer who is good company to keep” (Time)—here gives us his most entertaining, sly, and compelling novel to date. The novel evokes the tumult, events, and iconic faces of our time as it tells the story of Logan Mountstuart—writer, lover, and man of the world—through his intimate journals. It covers the “riotous and disorganized reality” of Mountstuart’s 85 years in all their extraordinary, tragic, and humorous aspects.

The journals begin with his boyhood in Montevideo, Uruguay, then move to Oxford in the 1920s and the publication of his first book, then on to Paris where he meets Joyce, Picasso, Hemingway, et al., and to Spain, where he covers the civil war. During World War II, we see him as an agent for naval intelligence, becoming embroiled in a murder scandal that involves the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The postwar years bring him to New York as an art dealer in the world of 1950s abstract expressionism, then on to West Africa, to London where he has a run-in with the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and, finally, to France where, in his old age, he acquires a measure of hard-won serenity.

This is a moving, ambitious, and richly conceived novel that summons up the heroics and follies of 20th-century life.

©2002 William Boyd (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Boyd does such a nimble job of ventriloquism in the book’s opening sections that we find ourselves forgetting that Mountstuart is a fictional character.” ( New York Times)

What listeners say about Any Human Heart

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

very satisfying story-telling

I'm tempted to call this novel "Forrest Gump Dances to the Music of Time" - but that would trivialize it. It's a more contemporary Evelyn Waugh/Anthony Powell -esque "20th century as lived through an (English) individual." The protagonist even meets Powell and Waugh in the course of his travels around and about the 20th century. It's not as grand as Powell, but then much of Powell dances over my head.

Our hero is Forrest Gump-like in that he causually crosses paths with an incredible number of historical figures -- but the story is so well spun, this never seems incredible when you're inside it. Of course, our hero is a literary figure, much like Powell's and Waugh's protagonists, but he's more accessible, and where Waugh would accentuate the satire and Powell make the prose dance, Boyd leans toward story and character and oblique historical backdrop.

You'll either love the novel or hate it. If the thought of "listening in" on a journal that skips a year here and there to land our Brit on the fringe of a revolution or other pivotal event turns you off, with discursions for how he's feeling about his current love and decor, skip it. I listened to it almost nonstop for two evenings and loved it.

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27 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fiction with insight more often found in biography

This story and it's telling traverses the banalities of life from the lovingly familiar and mundane to the sweet ache when life offers splurges of intense emotion. I wonder if this is written for those who have covered most of their life's ground. The story offers favorite moments of characterization. This book engaged me.

I admire William Boyd's talent for writing - for telling. A favorite author.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The Thrilling Life of the 20th Century Man

Logan Mountstuart's story, which spans every decade of the 20th century (born 1906, died 1991), is told through his personal journals, which he has kept off and on at various stages of his life. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, he moved to England with his English father and Uruguayan mother as a young boy. The earliest pages of the journals having been lost, the story picks up sometime in LMS's teens, when he made a pact with his two best friends, which in one case, had lasting consequences. He decided to become a writer and published a successful novel after attending Oxford university, and his early success led him to meet some of the leading figures of the arts and letters, making for plenty of namedropping, from Hemingway (encountered in Spain during the civil war), to Picasso (whom he interviewed for an article), to Evelyn Waugh (who kissed him on the mouth), to name just a few. But his acquaintance with the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson may have had dramatic consequences, as he believed the duke, with whom he had fallen out of favour, later betrayed him during WWII, leading to two years of internment in Switzerland after a failed intelligence mission. Because of the nature of the documents through which we get to know LMS, we are presented with many facets of his life, from intimate details about his loves and lovers to little anecdotes and comments about a wide variety of topics and people.

LMS certainly lived an exciting life, but this book having been highly recommended to me by various people, and having read two of Boyd's books before, I had high expectations, and while I thought the story was very good for the most part, I wasn't so impressed with all the cameos and appearances of famous people in his life and kept wanting more, which is why the novel suddenly became absolutely fascinating to me when, as an old man, LMS hit hard times and had to go to extreme measures to eke out a living and fight to hang on to his dignity and sense of self, even as he found himself unable to write the novel that might have put him back on the map. By then end I was completely won over and quite fascinated by this monumental construction, which is one I'll have to find time to read again in future, as I'm sure I'll enjoy it very differently now that the whole picture has been revealed. Strongly recommended.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

I didn't want this book to end

The story of Logan Mountstuart's life is told through his diary entries, taking him, and us, through the 20th century, bumping into major and minor writers, artists and historical personalities and touching on events like the spanish revolution, WW2, the Biafra War and a Baader-Meinhof plot. We get insider descriptions of milieus such as the Bloomsbury group, the Paris literati of the 20's and 30's, the music and arts scene in New York in 50's and 60's New York, and an assortment of spies, tax-refugees and expat royals in the Caribbean. Critics have pointed out that the plot is just a bi too contrived - routinely landing Mountstuart at the centre (or at least the fringes) of all this historical action, but it never seemed that way to me while listening. I found this beautifully written. Mountstuart's style does go through subtle changes, reflecting his age and the style of whatever present he is describing and, as always, Simon Vance's narration takes the prose up a notch. Logan Mountstuart is multi-faceted, a selfish, serial adulterer - longing for love and human connection, always moving on, but seeking a sense of home and belonging, part of big picture, but still obsessed with daily minutiae. I don't need to admire a literary character in every aspect to find his life a fascinating subject, or to feel a mild sense of loss as the narrative gently winds down, just before the next big turning point of the 20th century - the fall of the Berlin wall.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

The story of a pretentious old Brit

Any additional comments?

Admittedly I stopped listening after about 7 hours. It was all just too much. The incredibly pretentious main character was too exhausting and I genuinely didn't care what would happen to him. The name-dropping was so frequent sometimes I felt all the narrator was doing was reading footnotes about who famous people are. Blech.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting, engaging but not riviting

An interesting read, interesting concept, a fictional biography written by an unidentified hand. Its a detailed character study of one english individual and his few successes and many failings, buffeted about by the events of the 20th century.
You can empasize with him, but by the end I found him a curiously ackward and sightless individual, for all his experience and learning.
The plot winds on well, but you can tell that the author has written himself into corners at several locations and thus must resort to impluasable and jarring plot twists to get onto a reasonable track again, and some of those tracks run aground pretty quickly.
Well read, easy listening.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Middle class ennui

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, this is a classic underdog tale with excellent use of English language. As another reviewer commented, this is a very British "Forest Gump." It is a languid meander through the 20th century with fascinating characterization.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Any Human Heart?

This is an episodic book, each moment creating its own linked, but encapsulated 'memorable moment.' So it is difficult to extract one moment from another. The central character, Logan Mountstuart is a completely self-absorbed person with no or little insight into his selfishness. He manages to travel through an extraordinary life with middle-class boredom and complete British detachment to the effects he has on other people (as is befitting to his upbringing and era) whilst remaining complex and somehow likeable.

What about Simon Vance’s performance did you like?

Simon Vance created an understated but superbly crafted performance. He was able to transition from the schoolboy to elderly man and yet retain the same character, but with inflections of tone to suit the age of the character. Simon Vance conveyed the overall tone of Logan Mountstuart's character very well.

If you could take any character from Any Human Heart out to dinner, who would it be and why?

I don't live in the social circles of any of the characters from Any Human Heart. Going out to dinner with any of them would rely on their ability to put me at my ease. However, knowing them as I do from the book, I would know that the subtext of their thoughts would be how insufferably tedious they were finding the dinner. I would hate the social pressure to perform and try and seem interesting. Definitely a dinner invite to decline...

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

blech, what a guy

I really tried to like this story but could not. I believe Restless is, for instance, a terrific book, but this one? I suddenly thought I'd missed the real William Boyd. As the story careened from improbability to improbability (and yes, I DO like fiction), I lost interest, and by the time our hero got to Nigeria, I was outta there. I rarely don't go the distance on an audiobook.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A century-spanning tale told by a master

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes. The story being told through journal entries brings an intimacy to the main character that wouldn't have been possible in another format. He lives his fascinating life to the fullest, even though his decisions weren't always the best ones. He's not a perfect human being, but he is an intelligent one, one who experiences great love and inevitable loss. He meets some of the great artists of the 20th century while living in England, the US, Nigeria and France, and his World War II experience reminds us of some of the myriad ways in which that conflict inflicted its great losses.

What did you like best about this story?

The breadth of the story and the close-up view of the main character's life.

Have you listened to any of Simon Vance’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Simon Vance is a masterful narrator here---as he is in everything I've heard him read. I heartily recommend his participation in Stone's Fall by Iain Pears.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I missed Logan Mountstuart so much when the book was finished; I wanted it to go on and on.

Any additional comments?

Thank you for including such literary fiction on Audible!

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Feeling like one of the inferior intellectuals in the salon

I listened to this book because the author wrote Restless, a top five audio book for me. Also it seems to be a fan favorite. It depicts the life of a British writer through his journals kept in various parts of the world. It is richly detailed and covers a lot of cultural ground over s period of 60 years or so. I found it engrossing up to 1945 but then it becomes rather sad. Did not buy some of the choices he made. I admit it. I wanted a happier ending. So shallow of me.

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2 people found this helpful