I n a prolific literary career spanning 18 novels , William Boyd has become known for his masterfully interwoven plots, his sweeping historical backdrops , and his consistent readability. From the mega hit Any Human Heart (2002) , later adapted into a Channel 4 drama starring Matthew Macfadyen and Hayley Atwell, to his 2013 James Bond novel Solo , Boyd’s versatile output has included screenplays, journalism, and even a mischievous hoax: the fictional (but presented as otherwise) biography of an abstract expressionist artist called Nat Tate in 1998 even had David Bowie playing along. As Boyd publishes his latest book, the spy thriller Gabriel’s Moon , he shares insights into his reading and writing life.
.. It’s totally out of hand.
Some choices from the teetering pile: Homework by Geoff Dyer, Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert, A Seditious and Sinister Tribe by Donald Rayfield, Shooting Midnight Cowboy by Glenn Frankel, How to Be by Adam Nicolson. Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna, and the Discovery of the Modern Mind by Frank Tallis. I have a mild obsession with Vienna and Freudianism.
Tallis’s clear-eyed, judicious analysis is the best I’ve read – about the city and the man. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. But the love affair is over, now.
Ulysses by James Joyce . The novel to end all novels, I suppose. The story of one day in Dublin – all human life is there.
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. A unique novel. Only Nabokov could have pulled this off.
Anton Chekhov. The short stories. The human condition laid bare.
At my desk. If I try to read in bed or in an armchair I fall asleep. Any Human Heart .
It was technically the most difficult novel of mine to write: 500 pages covering an entire, long life in journal form. It has also provoked the most responses from readers – both sexes, all ages – more than any of my other novels. The best: “I am Logan Mountstuart [the protagonist of Any Human Heart ] and I knew all those women!” The worst: a critic described my first novel, A Good Man in Africa , as “pornographic”.
John Sandoe in Chelsea. A beautiful bookshop. The perfect, well-stocked independent bookshop with super-well-informed staff.
I’m afraid so. You can do absolutely anything in a novel. Film is a world of parameters, compromises, and impossibilities.
‘Gabriel’s Moon’ is out now, published by Viking.
