READING a William Boyd book is like devouring a Willard Price adventure for adults. Willard who? Bear with me: this is high praise. Price (1887-1983) was a writer of a series of popular novels for children featuring two brothers working with their zoologist father. Beginning in 1949 with Amazon Adventure, the sequence ends with Arctic Adventure in 1980. I missed the latter; the last I read was 1972’s grimly titled Cannibal Adventure, then glam rock happened.
Price wanted to make reading exciting for children and he did with serious aplomb. The same can be said for Boyd (for adults) whose own stories – as with this new novel The Romantic – have the addictive insistence of Haribo sweeties.
Boyd is a popular writer because he can write, he can tell a good yarn. The Romantic is another of his fake biographies. Set in the 19th century, it is the life of one Cashel Greville Ross and moves in locale from Ireland to the battle of Waterloo, from Sri Lanka to New England. Ross encounters the Italy of Byron and Shelley, then moves on to the Africa of Speke and Burton.
