Books: Drinker, Writer, Lover, Spy

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Is that all? As a matter of fact, it is. With its upper-crust settings and century-spanning scope, Any Human Heart invites comparison to Ian McKewan's Atonement. But while McKewan's novel is a work of elaborate, formal artifice, Any Human Heart is determinedly, even defiantly, formless. There is no overarching story here, not even a last-minute revelation or the standard old man's epiphany to tie it all together. Like any really honest diary, Any Human Heart is just a random, jumbled heap of days, most immensely amusing, some unbearably sad, but together they carry the full, devastating force of a lifetime of intermingled joy and pain. "Isn't this how life turns out, more often than not?" Mountstuart writes. "It refuses to conform to your needs--the narrative needs that you feel are essential to give rough shape to your time on this earth." Mountstuart struggles heroically to give his life this rough shape. He never quite does so. That's his failure as a person--but Boyd's triumph as an artist. --By Lev Grossman