I've been a fan of William Boyd for some years now, and especially like his epic novels, particularly Any Human Heart. Sweet Caress is in that territory, in fact, it could be seen as a female companion to that novel, in that it's a kind of cradle-to-grave telling of the story of the Twentieth Century through one woman's eyes, whereas Any Human Heart had a male protagonist.
The subtitle of this book is The Many Lives of Amory Clay. It opens when she was born, in 1908, and ends in 1983, mostly told through memories and flashbacks. It intersperses real historical characters amongst the fictional, and because Amory Clay is a photographer it enables Boyd to write an eyewitness account of most of the key events of the century. There are also photographs scattered throughout the book, which profess to be by Amory Clay; they give the book a sense of not being fictional, and it's even more convincing for that.
It's a tremendously compelling novel, over 400 pages, and very satisfying. I absolutely loved it!