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Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful romantic thriller
Review: A very unusual book which could be considered a period mystery, but stands as excellent literature on its own merits. The book starts in 1936 Los Angeles and follows a young woman architect for just enough pages for the reader to get interested in her. Then a mysterious man shows up and claims to be her father. After 70 pages she is then whisked away on a cross-Atlantic sea voyage to help her father find a woman in Lisbon. The bulk of the book then serves to explain why. In a slightly awkward device, the woman recounts, in prose form, what her father tells her about his life. This takes the reader to Manila in 1902 and follows a her father, as a doctor as he strives to bring modern medical practices to the Philippines, helps the occupying US Army investigate a series of gruesome murders, and watches his marriage fade away and maintain a love affair. There is also a subplot involving an attempt to build a flying machine. Events build to a crisis and collapse. By now the reader understands who the woman in Lisbon is and why she is important. Boyd's strength is building a complete description of time and place at the same time as he creates characters with great depth. This book won the LA Times Book Prize for Fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Love story from a man's angle, with plot aplenty
Review: As a woman, if you're ever so slightly bored of modern women writers, this is for you. William Boyd's achingly beautiful writing weaves an engrossing plot involving, but not limited to, a love story told from the man's point of view. And it's refreshing to read of a man's utter devotion, told ungushingly but with such feeling and realism. In addition to the love, there is the story set mostly in the Far East, a little murder, infidelity, characters which jump out at you but allow you to fill in the gaps.... and a prologue that will have you desperate to drop the kids off at school and leave them there all week while you finish. This is a book for everyone, and the only criticism is that you won't want to read anything else once you're done!
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Summary: Exotic locales add texture to bizare story of murder
Review: More than any North American or European writer workingtoday, William Boyd understands the developing world in a mannersomewhat like the greta Grahme Greene. Boyd's earlier books about Africa have been dead-on portraits of life in West Africa. You get the feeling from reading his African books of the ennui and decay caused by the heat, the humidity, and too many gins on the veranda. Blue Afternoons has many of the elements of Boyds earlier works - exotic tropical locals, the clash of European/North American cultures with those of the developing world. The exotic locales and glimpses into turn-of-the-century Philippine society gave the book an intriguing texture. The story, however, wasn't nearly as captivating. A marvelous backdrop for a contrived, thin storyline. I kept thinking that Boyd must have done an incredible amount of historical research to be able to evoke the time and setting with such descriptiveness. But he left out the most important part of the book - the story. Overall, not a very satisfying book. I recommend instead one of his earlier books, such as Brazzaville Beach or On Yankee Station
Rating: 
Summary: boyd at his least interesting
Review: This novel spans half a century and half the world. The novel's unconventional structure works beautifully with the writer's strong sense of story, character and suspense. On the surface there are stories and histories of medicine, architecture, flight, war, politics. Beneath the surface an insistent exploration of the evolution of love and the secrets that bind people together.
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Summary: Workmanlike Boyd is still a cut above most.
Review: William Boyd returns to the familiar ground of Hollywood's golden area between the World Wars (which was so meticulously recreated for us in his 1988 novel "The New Confessions") and embarks on a journey which takes him forward in time to the present day, and around the world to the Philippines and Portugal. While the Blue Afternoon does not match his earlier work (Brazzaville Beach, A Good Man in Africa) in terms of meticulous attention to historical detail, he is in top form in poignant descriptions of love affairs between characters in desparate circumstances. This book is a must read for Boyd fans. For those uninitiated to Boyd, it would perhaps be better to start out with "The Destiny of Nathalie X", a fine collection of short stories, or the more satisfying and thematically focused "The New Confessions".Fans of Fitzgerald and Evelyn Waugh may enjoy The Blue Afternoon, which has the same sort of sweeping temporal background as Gatsby or Brideshead.
Rating:
Summary: Suspense, Romance, someone make this a movie!!
Review: William Boyd, the author of "Brazzaville Beach" and "A Good Man in Africa", has written a tale of intrigue that takes us from the 1930s in Los Angeles to the late 1890s in the Philippines on a wild chase for the truth about a certain doctor's past. The tale opens with the confrontation between a budding female architect (most unlikely in 1936, but if you can get by that, the rest is easy) and an elderly man (the doctor) who claims to be her father. The story revolves around the doctor's need to eventually get to Lisbon in his efforts to locate someone.... during the trip to Portugal, he weaves the story for the architect and for us. The details of the grizzly war in the Philippines (and the behavior of the Americans there), the languid, filthy streets and neighborhoods of Manila, the medieval medical practices, and the complex world and class systems of Philippine society during the turn of the century all work together to make this a fantastic read. With little effort, this might even be a good movie!
Rating: 
Summary: Expected a love story
Review: William Boyd, the author of "Brazzaville Beach" and "A Good Man in Africa", has written a tale of intrigue that takes us from the 1930s in Los Angeles to the late 1890s in the Philippines on a wild chase for the truth about a certain doctor's past. The tale opens with the confrontation between a budding female architect (most unlikely in 1936, but if you can get by that, the rest is easy) and an elderly man (the doctor) who claims to be her father. The story revolves around the doctor's need to eventually get to Lisbon in his efforts to locate someone.... during the trip to Portugal, he weaves the story for the architect and for us. The details of the grizzly war in the Philippines (and the behavior of the Americans there), the languid, filthy streets and neighborhoods of Manila, the medieval medical practices, and the complex world and class systems of Philippine society during the turn of the century all work together to make this a fantastic read. With little effort, this might even be a good movie!
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