This reads like a memoir, complete with photographs supposedly taken by the narrator herself. At times I wondered if Amory Clay really had existed: "Born 7 March 1908, Died 23 June 1983," as the postscript records. The period detail from Berlin in the early 1930s to Saigon during the Vietnam war is exact and perceived from a personal female viewpoint. The chronological tale is interspersed with The Barrandale Journal 1977 which reveals the narrator in the time in which she is writing, a retired woman of 69. The scenes are carefully set and the life is not without incident but I soon became rather weary of Amory Clay. Perhaps the staging is the problem, incidents appear to be chosen to illustrate the times - from a love affair in New York in the 1930s to her daughter's entanglement with a hippie cult in California - rather than being a record of a real messy life. Essentially the whole work is a little too careful.

Once I pick up a William Boyd novel, I am almost unable to put it down again. Not all of them are as consistently good as this one, though. Superb. And it had me browsing the "vintage cameras" section of eBay, as well as looking at film for the camera I already have.

A gripping story of the complicated life of a sometime photographer, Amory Clay, against the backdrop of 20th-century history, from 1920s Berlin to the Vietnam War. Enhanced by found photographs scattered throughout, the characters feel real including Amory as the first-person narrator. With wars, conflict and their traumatic effects underpinning the narrative, the novel examines what it means to be alive and to keep on going.

William Boyd ist ein bekannter Autor. Ich hatte allerdings bisher noch nie etwas von ihm gelesen. Was mich an Die Fotografin so faszinierte waren die Pressestimmen zum Buch. Es hieß, dass es wirke, als hätte Boyd das Leben der Fotografin Amory Clay recherchiert; eben als war sie eine real existierende Person.

Amory Clay wurde 1908 geboren. Ihr Onkel, Gesellschaftsfotograf, schenkte ihr ihre erste Kamera. Sie schaffte es, ihren Willen durchzusetzen und Fotografin zu werden. Zunächst bei ihrem Onkel, später selbstständig in Berlin, Amerika, Zentralamerika und Vietnam; als Gesellschafts-, Reise- und Kriegsfotografin.

Erzählt wird ihre Lebensgeschichte, mit allen Höhen und Tiefen, Liebesgeschichten und Affären, Freundschaften, politischen Ereignissen. Zu letzterem gehören Nazis in Berlin und Schwarzhemden in England, der zweite Weltkrieg, der Vietnamkrieg, die Studenten- beziehungsweise Hippiebewegung. Ein wenig erinnert mich das Buch in dieser Hinsicht an Kate Atkinsons Die Unvollendete (und auch hier haben ist die Hauptfigur eine starke Frau, die ihrem Schicksal das ein oder andere Mal trotzt).

Boyd schafft es, in diesem Roman einen subjektiven Ausschnitt der Höhen und Tiefen des 20. Jahrhunderts abzubilden. Es scheint aber alles auch sehr intensiv recherchiert zu sein, sodass die Geschichte so auch absolut hätte stattfinden können. Unterstrichen wird dies noch durch die Fotos, die dem Text beigefügt sind, und “von Amory Clay sind”.

Unglaublich begeistert hat mich Boyds Fähigkeit, so glaubwürdig aus Sicht einer Frau zu schreiben. Viele Autoren können es nicht (auch viele Frauen können nicht gut aus Sicht eines Mannes schreiben). Er beweist so viel Einfühlungsvermögen. Großartig!

Ich möchte noch einen Satz aus dem Buch mit euch teilen:

Ja, mein Leben war sehr kompliziert, doch nun wird mir klar, das gerade diese Komplikationen mich gefordert und am Ende beglückt haben.

Es gibt an diesem Buch nichts, das mich nicht begeisterte oder das mir nicht gefiel! Ein so klasse Roman!

Weitere Rezensionen von mir findest du auf meinem Blog https://buchstuetze.wordpress.com/

I felt manipulated by this book. It was like a William Boyd book--epic, historic, strong women--without any of the heart. The 2nd half was much better than the first at least.

Why not Bulgaria?

In the early days of the twentieth century, young Amory Clay decided to emulate her uncle Greville and become a professional photographer. Many years later, Amory reminisces about where her profession has taken her over the years. And of course it has taken her to all the places we’d expect – the decadence of ‘30s Berlin, the rise of the Nazis, WW2, Vietnam, in most of which places, this being a Boyd book, she has sex with a “scandalous” edge – married men, women, etc.

I’m afraid I abandoned this halfway through, after it taking me over a month to get to that point. I used to love William Boyd and still think his earlier books, and an occasional later one, are great stories well told. But recently I’ve found myself struggling to get up any real interest in the lives of his characters or in their stories. This one has been told before and told better by Boyd himself, in Any Human Heart, the story of a man who lived through all the major events of the twentieth century (and had lots of sex). Why Boyd felt it would be a good idea to do it again with a female lead beats me, but even if I wasn’t having strong feelings of déjà vu I doubt if Avery would have won my heart.

The thing about her is that she goes to these interesting places – Berlin, London, New York – and seems to miss everything interesting about them, perhaps because she spends so much time in bedrooms. I found myself wearily wishing that just once an author would find somewhere new to explore rather than the overtrodden path of Nazis/WW2, etc. Not to labour the point, but the twentieth century lasted for a hundred years and involved countries other than the UK, the USA and Germany. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if some author leapt into the unknown and took us to, say, Bulgaria, or Bahrain, or Venezuela? I assume something must have happened in these countries over the course of a century. I know, I know – plenty of authors have gone further afield, but I was feeling bored and a little bitter while I was musing. Boyd used to be one of the authors to whom I looked to expand my fictional horizons, but recently his books feel safely settled in the overly familiar.

He’s also uses an odd device in this one, which I feel doesn’t work at all. Over the years in real life, he has collected random photographs from sales, etc., which he presents here as Amory’s work. This meant that, firstly, it often felt to me that he was manipulating the story to fit round the photos so that oddly random episodes would be included, like Amory briefly working as a fashion photographer, which didn’t sit well with the character or the overall thrust of her life. Secondly, the photos are not particularly special – for the most part they are rather mundane snaps of people doing random things. I felt that if these were supposed to highlight Amory’s talent, then the poor girl clearly didn’t have much.

My other major complaint is that Amory comes over as such a passive character, which I don’t think was Boyd’s intent at all. I think he was trying to portray her as adventurous, daring, ahead of her time – an early example of a woman playing men at their own game. But at every step of her life (up to the halfway mark when I gave up), every job she gets is arranged for her by a man – her photographer uncle, her rich lover, and so on. Even when she crosses to Berlin to photograph the seedy side of life with a view to gaining some notoriety, she does so at her uncle’s suggestion and funded by his money, and on her return, it is he who arranges her exhibition and tempts the interest of the press. Amory fades to near invisibility in terms of her own input to the trajectory of her life.

So, bored and dismal, I gave up. Sorry, Mr Boyd!

www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com

An interesting exercise, this book. Boyd has imagined up the centre of his fictional autobiographical book from found images and snatches of other people's memories over the years, and for the most part it does the trick.

Like any life, it is somewhat uneven in its ability to draw you in. I found my interest waning through the more domesticated of Amory Clay's years, only for it to pick back up again once the immensely flawed husband is dispatched.

I liked it, but it did drag in parts.

I know I read [b:Any Human Heart|77866|Any Human Heart|William Boyd|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386912980s/77866.jpg|2237564] some years ago, and it was a fictional autobiography, but nothing about it especially stuck in my mind. Sweet Caress fell into my hands as it was lent to me by someone in my book group who thought I would enjoy it. Boyd seems to specialise in these "autofictions". Yes, I did enjoy this in an easy-reading way, and he did a pretty good job of writing as a woman (even if I belong to the group who don't believe that most women obsessively study and compare their lovers' penises). It's a little like Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet series in that it spans much of the 20th century, but somehow it was much less engaging, perhaps because everything is seen from Amory's viewpoint.

I guess the most striking feature is that it brings home just how much Amory's generation (born 1908) was affected by war throughout the century. Her father returned psychologically damaged from WWI; she loses her brother in WWII as well as experiencing action herself as a photo journalist; her husband is as damaged as her father was by his experiences in WWII, and for good measure Amory goes to Vietnam in 1966 (this section was the one I found the least convincing). The photos were an odd touch, especially as most of them cannot be considered great photos by any means -- Boyd specifically said he didn't pick ones that were "too good". Amory is obviously intended to be a jobbing photographer, not a genius. At the same time, her determination and independence were well conveyed.

There's good writing here and I especially liked the final chapter, but at the same time I kind of wonder what the point is. I could read the autobiography of a real person, such as [a:Martha Gellhorn|162626|Martha Gellhorn|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1332769689p2/162626.jpg], and it would be at least as fascinating.