Sweet Caress

I’m a fan of William Boyd. I’ve read most of his books. But I have trouble remembering some of them. As much as I enjoy the story and am swept along by his narrative skill, I often come to the end of the book only to find that few days or weeks later I can’t recall much about it.

Maybe it’s his endings, which tend to be resolutely un-resolute, denying the reader a solid conclusion and leaving them hanging. Or maybe it’s his avoidance of melodrama, and an insistence on the doubts and vagaries of all our daily existences. In his world, there are no neat conclusions. But that no doubt says more about me than him.

Sweet Caress, to my astonishment, has both. It concludes with doubt and possibility and yet also manages to offer a concrete ending. And the combination of the two make sense of all that has gone before: the random wanderings of a photographer in the early years of the 20^th century. Amory Clay takes photographs in 1930s England and Berlin. She visits a combat zone in France in 1944 and then Vietnam in the 60s. She marries and has children. The children grow up and their lives lead to more photographs.

It's a story that ambles along from decade to decade and incident to incident, with little or no linking thread except for the presence of Amory herself. At times you almost feel as though Boyd is making it all up as he goes along, so apparently unconnected is everything. But then you reach the end, and everything comes into focus. Everything is tied together. And the title, taken from a fictional quote at the beginning, offers the key you need to unlock the puzzle.