Books we like ... and books we're not too fussed about
Martin Amis
Vintage 2011
Martin Amis has always been, as the blurb proclaims, an impressive stylist. His verbal dexterity, his command of the language, puts him in a league above the run-of-the-mill English novelist who inhabits a very small world and seems content only to communicate that smallness: dinner parties, social climbing, family mishaps, the occasional affair. He is also very funny. But – and it is a very big but – as the years have gone by the style seems to have taken over at the expense of a comprehensible story. The Pregmant Widow isn’t as impenetrable as Yellow Dog or House of Meetings – but its account, over many, many pages, of a group of undergrads in a castle in Italy in the summer of 1970 talking about classic novels and sex, is predictably wearing. Nothing much happens; this might be convincingly true to life but it isn’t much fun. Towards the end, as the story is brought up to date, it improves, and the account of the life and death of the main character’s sister, which I suspect is very close to Amis’s own experience, is moving and masterfully handled. In fact I suspect that a lot here is autobiographical – but if that’s what you’re interested in, Amis’s memoir, Experience, is a much better place to start. That said, there was a great deal I enjoyed here – in particular the linguistic fireworks, and the very funny observations on contemporary mores and growing old – but finding them was sometimes like sifting mud for diamonds. However, in both cases, it’s probably worthwhile sticking with it.
2 July 2011
http://www.martinamisweb.com/
See also: Koba the Dread ; The Second Plane
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