The Romantic

This is going to sound like damning with faint praise, but here’s another one of William Boyd’s ‘whole life’ novels… and it’s just really, really good. I don’t know what else to say that hasn’t been said by so many others so many times. 

He has a talent for immersing you not just in another time, but for finding a way to construct a hypnotically readable narrative around his main character’s life during the years he’s describing. This time it’s the 19th century* and it comes to life so vividly you can almost touch it. I was on holiday when I read this, so I had the time, but even so, I went through all 450 pages in a little under two days. I really could not stop reading.

If my favourite of these ‘whole life’ stories is Sweet Caress, The Romantic runs it a closed second. A very close second. Can’t recommend it enough. And fans of William Boyd probably won’t need to hear any more.

*Among others, he meets the Shelleys and Lord Byron, and Speke, the discoverer of the source of the Nile.