This is the kind of novel that William Boyd does best, the tale of an Everyman caught in the waves of history, sometimes surviving by his wits, other times sinking by his shortcomings ... Boyd’s made Cashel into an infinitely pleasurable travel companion ... Boyd has enormous fun describing real-life people through Cashel’s eyes ... Steeped in both gentle melancholy and unfettered joy, as well as the recognition that allowing yourself to be buffeted by the winds of change makes life both alarming and interesting.
An absorbing tale ... For a reader willing to accept [a] lack of nuance, though, The Romantic is a panoramic, transporting yarn ... Engrossing, scattershot.
All this should be fun. But alas, The Romantic is a tired, spiritless piece of work, written as if Mr. Boyd was slogging dutifully through the formula he created and has previously used to better effect ... Who is Mr. Boyd’s target reader, one wonders? Anyone with a genuine interest in the Byron and Shelley circle, or African exploration, or literary London, will find nothing of consequence in these pages. And anyone looking for an engrossing love story will not find one in the conventional romance of Ross and his Raphaella.
Boyd’s books are so enjoyable that it’s hard for us to resent the tricks being played on us, even as we find ourselves constantly reaching for Google, wanting to know what is and isn’t real ... Boyd is also gently mocking the tedium of many lives deemed worthy of biography.
Isn’t tedious as such – for most of its distended length The Romantic rattles along in high old melodramatic style – but, boy, does it feel twice-told. No, not just twice-told: thrice-, quadruple-told. The life story of a man who, Zelig-like, manages to be present (or at least loitering nearby) at some of the major events of 19th-century history and literature? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before ... It’s an open question whether the 19th-century novel still needs homaging, two centuries and many prior homages later ... The familiar can be comforting. It can also be boring. The one thing it isn’t is romantic – with or without a capital R.
Does not, it must be said, pack the same emotional punch as some of Boyd’s earlier work, but then this essentially is a ripping yarn. And as such, it is pretty much faultless: as moreish as good chocolate, terrifically entertaining, and deeply humane.
Boyd taps into the classical novel tradition with this sweeping tale of one man’s century-spanning life, even to the extent of providing the accustomed framing device: the chance discovery of a cache of papers and mementoes ... Boyd’s sources are visible but entertainingly deployed.
There are not only sketches of real-life characters such as explorer-diplomat Sir Richard Burton and poets Shelley and Byron, but also occasional footnotes that support the authenticity of some events ... The fragmentary records of Cashel’s life are wrapped around by the engaging voice of the narrator.
It is admirably and convincingly done, so much so that, after reading a chapter set in Pisa where Cashel meets Byron and Shelley, I consulted the index of Leslie Marchand’s incomparable edition of Byron’s letters and journals to see if there was any mention of Cashel ... There is no shortage of incident in Cashel’s long and varied life. The plot is a rambling one, so much so that this may be called a picaresque novel, which answers with a splendid and convincing affirmative to Scott’s question: 'what is the plot for but to bring in fine things?' There is a cornucopia of fine things here.
A sprawling cradle-to-grave tale ... Reading it, one is reminded that Boyd does not write beautiful sentences. But he does write lots of them. He takes, it seems, an enviably pragmatic attitude to his work. His books are dependably solid and well made. Less the brooding artist, more the contented craftsman ... Entertaining ... The faux-novelisation that follows, however, is a barely credible romp through the century ... This grand caper is sustained winningly enough. The sense of pace achieved is largely owed to Boyd’s casually buoyant, if sometimes artless, prose ... I wonder too whether even the most sincerely entertained reader might close the book with a dying expectation of something more in the way of reflection. It is not, I hope, an unacceptable kind of literary fatphobia to insist that a 450-page novel might have to justify its weight to the reader.
One of the many pleasures of Boyd’s fiction is that history doesn’t just happen around his characters – it happens to them ... Boyd has a brilliant comic ear for posterity’s most absurd possibilities ... The sentences – even the death sentences – thrum with life.
This is a rambunctious, swashbuckling tale, told with panache by a master storyteller. Boyd is sufficiently confident in his material to portray historical incidents and characters with casual relish ... Longstanding admirers of Boyd have come to expect, and delight in, his generous, maximalist approach to both storyline and character. So perhaps it is inevitable that his prose, usually so elegant, occasionally tips over into overripe melodrama ... Addictive.
Readers for whom no literary thrill is greater than a spirited, multidecade saga about an eventful life will love The Romantic, a historical novel by William Boyd ... May be overstuffed with incident, but the incidents are never dull. Romantics are trusting souls, sometimes to their detriment, as Boyd makes clear in this enjoyable adventure.
While the authorial intrusions feel tacked on, this is a fine novel, and it is a pleasure to be immersed in Boyd’s wry prose. As over-the-top as Cashel’s life is, his failings and romantic ideals render him compellingly and endearingly human.
Boyd is as magically readable as ever, and, as always with his whole life novels, there is an invigorating air of spontaneity ... In the end, though, the book feels far more artificial than Boyd’s 20th century whole-lifers. This is partly because of the endless verbal anachronisms ... More seriously, we never really get the sense that Cashel is a man of his time.
Boyd is simultaneously stretching himself — it feels like his most densely packed novel yet — and falling back on elements he’s proved himself a master of before ... Already there is enough life here for a triple-decker saga — but we are only one-third of the way through the book. And this is what’s primarily the matter with The Romantic: too much matter ... the book is never boring, but nor does it stay in one place long enough to achieve depth or focus. Characters — all realised in full colour — come and go so briskly that the result at times is less a novel than a sheep dip. Similarly, plot lines are dispatched when something else catches Boyd’s imagination ... And yet there’s something irresistible about that energy. Through sheer exuberance, because you’ve been through so much together, the page-drunk reader ends up feeling affection for Cashel.
Appealing ... It’s an amusingly implausible life, and Ross, prey to drink, laudanum, strong passions, and the author’s massaging of history, is an always-engaging character. While W.B. may question the heft of Ross’ legacy, Boyd continues to enrich his own. A smart, colorful entertainment.
