[2] Boyd describes it as a "whole life novel" in that it tells the story of the book's main character "from cradle to grave", a technique he also employed in The New Confessions (1987) and Any Human Heart (2002).

She excels academically at boarding school and was encouraged by her teacher to go to Somerville College, Oxford, but performs badly in her exams after her father, traumatised by his military experiences in the First World War, tries to commit suicide and to kill her as well.

She meets and marries a British officer, Sholto Farr in 1946, who is also a Scottish lord, and – unexpectedly, as she had thought the injuries she had received from Mosley's supporters had made her infertile – gives birth to twin daughters.

Living in reduced circumstances, Amory returns to photography, seeks excitement as a Vietnam War photographer, then travels to California to search for one of her daughters, who has joined a hippy colony and religious sect, and with whom she is eventually reconciled.

[4] A French language edition, Les vies multiples d’Amory Clay, translated by Isabelle Perrin, was published by Éditions du Seuil in October 2015.

She emerges from this novel as a rounded, complex, infernally beguiling human being... [Boyd] delights in blending artifice with naturalism – the text is punctuated by photos supposedly taken by Amory and by the occasional portrait, sufficiently blurred to remain just anonymous enough.

[12] Justin Cartwright, also for The Observer, said that "Sweet Caress is a compendious and intelligent work, made authentic by Boyd’s extensive use of real dispatches and evocative photographs and his familiarity with makes of camera".

[16] Madeleine Keane, reviewing the book in the Irish Independent, said: "One of the great strengths of Sweet Caress is Amory – a complex character who, though not always likeable, is frequently admirable, not least in her desire to lead an interesting life".

Boyd’s decision to go for panoramic sweep rather than detailed close-up often results in an unsatisfying cursoriness... A running gag between Amory and her uncle is that everyone can be summed up in four adjectives.

Boyd said in 2017 that although he believed that the Ministry of Defence still denied it, he thought that "it is pretty much established now that British forces were fighting in Vietnam, disguised in the late 60s early 70s".