There’s a small group of us at Readings who are great fans of William Boyd, with one of my colleagues claiming his Any Human Heart as one of her favourite books. Boyd is a master storyteller who weaves history into his narratives and does so absolutely convincingly. In Sweet Caress (as in Any Human Heart) he places his character against the broad sweep of history and, in this case, most of the twentieth century.

Amory Clay was born in 1908; she was supposed to be a boy and so was given the slightly androgynous name. When she was a teenager her father tried to drown them both by driving their car into a lake. Fortunately, it was shallow, although her father confided that he had thought it was deeper.

Later, an interest in photography leads her to become an assistant to her mother’s brother, a society photographer. Then, bored, she moves to Berlin and photographs the clubs and brothels of the Weimar Republic. Her subsequent exhibition scandalises London society and, chastened, she moves to New York with the promise of a job as a photographer with an American magazine published by her married lover. As war looms, Amory is posted to London and then to France with the Allied invasion. One supposes that Boyd has drawn on the life of the American war photographer, Margaret Bourke-White, who was the first woman to be allowed to work in combat zones. Intriguingly, Sweet Caress is illustrated by Amory’s photographs, photographs that Boyd has painstakingly found to match each period in Amory’s career.

I enjoyed Sweet Caress immensely; it’s a broad and compelling narrative artlessly told and demonstrates Boyd’s great skill as a writer. In short, it’s totally enjoyable.

Mark Rubbo