Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

by William Boyd

"When Amory Clay was born, in the decade before the Great War, her disappointed father gave her an androgynous name and announced the birth of a son. But this daughter was not one to let others define her; Amory became a woman who accepted no limits to what that could mean, and, from the time she picked up her first camera, one who would record her own version of events. Moving freely between London and New York, between photojournalism and fashion photography, and between the men who love her on complicated terms, Amory establishes her reputation as a risk taker and a passionate life traveler. Her hunger for experience draws her to the decadence of Weimar Berlin and the violence of London's blackshirt riots, to the Rhineland with Allied troops and into the political tangle of war-torn Vietnam. In her ambitious career, the seminal moments of the 20th century will become the unforgettable moments of her own biography, as well. In Sweet Caress, Amory Clay comes wondrously to life, her vibrant personality enveloping the reader from the start. And, running through the novel, her photographs over the decades allow us to experience this vast story not only with Amory's voice but with her vision. William Boyd's Sweet Caress captures an entire lifetime unforgettably within its pages. It captivates."--

• ISBN10: 1632863324
• ISBN13: 9781632863324
• Publish Date: 15 September 2015 (first published 27 August 2015)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 26 October 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
• Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic USA
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 464
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

William Boyd is another author that is often recommended to me but that I can't warm to. Not that I dislike his books. On the contrary, I'm often intrigued by his themes and by his writing. I just don't seem to be able to derive any satisfaction out of reading them.

Sweet Caress is a prime example of this dilemma:
The story follows the life of Amory Clay, a woman who in her youth defies the advice of her parents and sets out to become a photographer. Soon thrown into the throng of the roaring twenties and early thirties, she lives a life that is similar to some of the real life individuals that I love to read about.

And that is just it - I love reading biographies and stories involving the real personalities, and I just can't get my head around why I would want to read a fictional account that involves characters that are somehow based on but are not - not even fictional versions of - the actual individuals of the time.

Why include fictional characters that resemble Anita Berber and Marianne Breslauer, when they could actually be included as characters? I mean, I get that disguising real people as fictional characters is useful, even necessary, to offend contemporaries of the author, but this is hardly the case here.
After that I lost interest and skim read to the end.

This is just another case where I'd prefer a non-fiction book about the era to a literary attempt at historical fiction.