"Sweet Caress" by William Boyd

William Boyd is on record as wanting his readers to forget that a book is fiction and, rather, believe that it is describing reality. In “Sweet Caress” he has produced a book—complete with faded and dated photographs—that purports to be the autobiography of Amory Clay, a woman in spite of the man’s name, who was born in 1908 and died in 1983. And, yes, he succeeds—you read it like an autobiography. The tale of her life is told in great detail—with the various episodes obviously well researched in the authentic atmosphere and circumstances of each period—as we follow Amory through school and into her brief career as a fashion photographer in London of the ‘twenties; a sojourn taking photographs in Berlin’s night clubs and brothels: working for a fashion magazine in New York; a stint as a war photographer in the closing stages of WW2; marriage and motherhood in Scotland; a return to war photography in Vietnam; and a final excursion to California in the ‘seventies to find a daughter who has married the leader of a hippy commune. As I say, all these different venues and episodes are clothed, as it were, in authentic period detail.

And as Amory’s life progresses, we have a rather ludicrous loss of virginity, one major affair, and an affair within that affair, marriage, and a casual coupling later in life. The account of her life is interspersed with sections of a journal that she is writing in her rather bleak cottage on an island off the western coast of Scotland—drinks with neighbors, visits to the doctor, walks with her dog, worries about her declining health.

William Boyd apparently collects old photographs, buys them at yard sales and in junk shops, and the photos reproduced in the book are from his collection. One is of a man standing on his head watched by a couple of children—and this is Amory’s first memory of her father—standing  on his head. There is a very interesting interview with William Boyd in the London Telegraph. He explains his interest in collecting old photographs and discusses their use in “Sweet Caress.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/william-boyd-sweet-caress-photographs/

As I say, opinions are mixed: a New York Times reviewer, while admiring the attempt, turns thumbs down. The Guardian reviewer was ecstatic. A blurb from a Spectator review says, “Superbly written and desperately moving.”

I enjoyed it. You might give it a try…