An Ice-Cream War is William Boyd’s sparkling debut novel on the grimly comic side of conflict, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Picaresque . . . these is a cornucopia of fine things here . . . The Romantic, always enjoyable, ranks with two of his best: The New Confessions and Any Human Heart. Both were intelligent and engrossing, novels you lived with. Both told a fine story very well. The Romantic does just that ― Scotsman Vienna. 1913. It is a fine day in August when Lysander Rief, a young English actor, walks through the city to his first appointment with the eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Bensimon. Sitting in the waiting room he is anxiously pondering the nature of his problem when an extraordinary woman enters. She is clearly in distress, but Lysander is immediately drawn to her strange, hazel eyes and her unusual, intense beauty. You constantly want to see how Cashel will manage to get himself out of various scrapes and I kept willing him on. He’s a likeable, decent and well-meaning character who helps others, with as the title suggests a strong romantic side. I was rooting for him all the way hoping his life would turn out well.

The fictional biography of Cashel Greville Ross takes us from his beginnings as an orphan living with his aunt in rural Ireland through the many adventures and loves in his life. When it comes to his description of love stories, and dalliances, Boyd is rather old fashioned. I did like Cashel’s definition of love “to care more about the person you loved than you did about yourself” (444). All in all this is a thoroughly enjoyable, immensely readable book. It's not overlong as some fictional autobiographies can be and you get some very famous names thrown in for good measure as Cashel Greville Ross continues his adventures from Waterloo to the discovery of the source of the Nile.

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He should be concentrating on his job as an art assessor, but his complicated personal life keeps intruding. And that’s before we even get to his sense of alienation, of being a fish out of water. For Henderson is a shy man lost in a country of extraverts and weirdos. Subway poets, loony millionaires, Bible-bashers and sharp-suited hoods stalk him wherever he goes. But it is only when he’s sent to America’s deep South to examine a rare collection of paintings that matters take a life-threatening turn. Still, if it doesn’t kill you, they say it can only make you stronger . . . It is hard to think of another contemporary author who quietly marches his readers so relentlessly towards death London, 1914. War is stirring, and events in Vienna have caught up with Lysander. Unable to live an ordinary life, he is plunged into the dangerous theatr Two strong women become central to the story; Contessa Raphaella Rezzo; and widow Mrs Frances (Frannie) Broome. Both women are interesting but from their character descriptions, and their actions, it becomes difficult to differentiate between the two, who occupy different parts of the world, and the narrative. Boyd uses the description ‘cavaliere servante’ to describe Raphaella.

And believable is the word here, because in the end it is still not certain if Cashel Greville Ross is a real historical figure or as is more likely a totally made up character embedded in historical fact. Whatever you perceive it to be there is no doubting The Romantic is an extraordinary adventure and the one question that runs through the story is “What do we leave behind us when we die?” The writing is a joy and Boyd has that skill of conjuring the sights and sounds of place and time that effortlessly transports the reader. Though this is quite a lengthy book I just didn’t want it to end.

Boyd is brilliant at evoking historical settings and this picaresque novel is similar to some of his other books in some ways such as the main character’s romantic entanglements and European settings. Disappointing. A flat and unconvincing story. The protagonist makes a long series of poor judgements and is somewhat impassively buffeted from one catastrophy to another, largely avoidable had be been less naive. He is supported by an inexplicably loyal character with quite ludicrous (overly convenient) talents, designed simply to rescue Cashel at every turn. The love interest who purportedly sustains the hero through his tribulations is utterly unconvincing, cold and manipulative - only he won't let himself see it. The life of Cashel Greville Ross encompasses taking part in the battle of Waterloo, hanging out with Shelley and Byron in Italy, prison in London, running a brewery in New England, exploring Africa and being a consul in Trieste. His life begins in 1799 and stretches to the advent of the modern age in the late Nineteenth century.

Cashel has good modern views on all of these things (he is anti-slavery, and condemns his East India Company superior officer for committing an “atrocity” by slaughtering some Kandyan villagers). He is, in other words, not a 19th-century person but a 21st-century person, affably and occasionally judgmentally consorting with some 19th-century cosplayers. Beyond this he is a cipher. Suzi Feay Explorer, author, soldier, lover: The Romantic, by William Boyd, reviewed Boyd’s intrepid hero is present at Waterloo, befriends Byron and Shelley, and even beats the Burton-Speke expedition to discover the source of the Nile At the beginning of The Romantic, William Boyd asks: “What do we leave behind us when we die?” Posterity – and legacy – are questions that have preoccupied him for decades. There are few writers today as obsessed by the biographical – or faux-biographical – form. Over the course of his career, Boyd has specialised in examining the fictitious lives of his characters with wit and authority. He has now returned to life writing with this account of Cashel Greville Ross, the self-described “bastard son of an Anglo-Irish Protestant aristocrat and a Scottish governess”.

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He is not a 19th-century person but a 21st-century person, affably and occasionally judgmentally consorting with some 19th-century cosplayers. Beyond this he is a cipher Virginia Woolf once wrote in her diaries that she meant to write about death, but “life came breaking in as usual”. In The Romantic, as in all of Boyd’s best books, life is always breaking in. The sentences – even the death sentences – thrum with life: its seemingly irreversible errors, decisions and indignities. There is a moment in this novel where the protagonist reads his own obituary – then cheerfully moves on. Later in the book, a “simple” headstone will be etched with the wrong name. Life stumbles onward. The mistakes are many. But the reading, and the writing, never stop.