Still not certain whether I have read this before. The central figure, Logan Mountstewart, sounds very familiar, but I had no memory of swathes of the plot.
The fictional diaries of a man who bestrides most of the 20th century, born early 1906, dies 1991, so roughly 10 years lifespan behind my Dad, (1918 – 2016, so father lived a bit longer).
Logan is a bit of an upper middle class English chap, public school, Oxford, big socialite (knew everyone from Joyce, Picasso, Ian Fleming (his boss in the war years), fell out badly with the English monarch who ran off with Mrs Simpson), imprisoned in Switzerland towards the end of WW2, on a rather bonkers spying mission. A minor success as a novelist and a New York art dealer post war, involved inadvertently with the Baader Meinhof gang in the 1970’s, when living in poverty in London. A real rag bag of a life.
Is it a good book? I really don’t know; Mountstewart has a far more privileged life than most of us, whether a better or more successful one is a moot point.
Comments