Book Review: "Sweet Caress" by William Boyd

My favourite book this year has been “The Romantic” by William Boyd and so, since then, I have tried to get my hands on everything he has written that I have not read. William Boyd’s writing is something special: descriptive, atmospheric with dialogue which is just enough for the reader to imagine what is going on - nothing is ever overdone but nothing is ever underdone either. He tends to get this beautiful mix between the dialogue and the body language of each character, letting us imagine how they would be if they were really alive. Obviously, this current book is no different. It is a beautiful book and I have to say that it is probably a great example of said body language.

The book is about a girl who is in love with photography, her name is Amory. Amory is born in the Edwardian era and has two younger siblings: a girl named Peggy (it’s not short for anything, it’s just Peggy) and a boy named Alexander. Of course, the boy was the most wanted out of the three, but as they grow up it is clear that only the two girls have any intellect, social ability or basically anything that makes you a real functioning human being. Alexander is not a good child, not an intelligent child and not a very social child either. When Amory is sent away to boarding school, she is the only one out of the three to have done so. When her father takes her to tea one day and the car flies into a lake, beginning to sink - things begin to change.

The book flicks back and forth between the past and the present. In the present, the grown woman Amory drinks gin and whisky and has nightmares about her father. Her father was a writer and when he went off to the First World War, he came back completely mad. When he said he was writing a book, he really had not written a thing and, as his behaviour became more and more erratic, so did the lives of those around him. Another thing that Amory does is she becomes an apprentice to her uncle Greville in his photography studio. He trains her to become someone who can move in society and someone who is also a woman of a good reputation as a photographer.

As the story moves on, we start to gain access to her love affairs over the years and the way in which the world is changing between the wars. Her photography becomes one of the ways she documents her past and the pasts of others. I have to say that there is a lot of history in this book: from Berlin between the wars and the panic of the Second World War. It's almost like reading Christopher Isherwood in a way. When she meets Alexander as he becomes a pilot, she cannot help but thinking that he is still a school-aged child. But it is clear than Alexander has completely changed - a boy who was once incompetent has become more than competent.

Between the wars and then almost having her dog put down because he was uncontrollably sick, from her love affairs and her brother becoming a fighter pilot, Amory has so many things going on in her life. In the midst of World War 2, there are strange confusions as Amory tries to find out who she truly is. She does not want to be regarded as a loose woman, nor does she want to be unloved, however she is someone who is sure as sure can be that she was meant to be a photographer.

As the story goes on, the book goes through the deaths and lives of the Clay family (her family) and there is a certain mourning that underpins the text in which the main character ponders about whether your entire life is just a preparation for death. The book's concentration on personal history and the personal history of the main character happens to be the one thing that keeps the reader reading on. The very idea of personal history is something that connects us all, as if it was a universal tone to all. It is a fantastic feature of many of Boyd's novels.