A review by blueyorkie
London Fields by Martin Amis
3.0
London Fields. Make no mistake about the title. There is nothing rustic about this novel. It is a story of murder, in a depressing London, not in itself - Portobello Road and its colourful facades, Notting Hill, but through the prism of the style of the author, qualified as master of the "unpleasant new".
Let's start, as Martin Amis decreed, with the potential assassin, the ill-named Keith Talent, give me the expression: small, sweeping strike, of the rogue genre, not enough shoulder for ultra-violence, the racketeering or robbery, low-level seducer. Champion of the pub he frequented, the follower of the national sport of any right self-respecting public house, darts or darts. He was hiding a woman and child in an apartment in a cramped closet. Let's move on to the victim: Nicola Six, attractive thirty-something woman, oh so artificial, quintessence in her way of the weaker sex, afflicted with a marked appetite for alcohol, and endowed with the faculty of guessing what necessarily - fatally instead,
will happen to him. And then we have Guy Clinch, the stooge of the two aforementioned, the good guy; the one who is said to be gentle with a little superior smile of commiseration suffers pain from those around him and in particular from his Pantagruel's son. Finally, let's not forget the narrator, Samson Young, author afflicted with a crying lack of imagination, being omnipresent taking us into the confidence of the novel he is writing. Who knows his characters and meets them at intervals regular and asked them to act according to his plans to tie up the work in creation.
The novel, where cynical humour is very present, describes an English Thatcherian society downgraded in the anxiety-provoking climate of possible nuclear annihilation and more broadly illustrates the absurdity and the grotesque of Western capitalist society. This disconcerting book certainly has literary qualities, but sometimes appears confused and is likely to tire more than one.
Let's start, as Martin Amis decreed, with the potential assassin, the ill-named Keith Talent, give me the expression: small, sweeping strike, of the rogue genre, not enough shoulder for ultra-violence, the racketeering or robbery, low-level seducer. Champion of the pub he frequented, the follower of the national sport of any right self-respecting public house, darts or darts. He was hiding a woman and child in an apartment in a cramped closet. Let's move on to the victim: Nicola Six, attractive thirty-something woman, oh so artificial, quintessence in her way of the weaker sex, afflicted with a marked appetite for alcohol, and endowed with the faculty of guessing what necessarily - fatally instead,
will happen to him. And then we have Guy Clinch, the stooge of the two aforementioned, the good guy; the one who is said to be gentle with a little superior smile of commiseration suffers pain from those around him and in particular from his Pantagruel's son. Finally, let's not forget the narrator, Samson Young, author afflicted with a crying lack of imagination, being omnipresent taking us into the confidence of the novel he is writing. Who knows his characters and meets them at intervals regular and asked them to act according to his plans to tie up the work in creation.
The novel, where cynical humour is very present, describes an English Thatcherian society downgraded in the anxiety-provoking climate of possible nuclear annihilation and more broadly illustrates the absurdity and the grotesque of Western capitalist society. This disconcerting book certainly has literary qualities, but sometimes appears confused and is likely to tire more than one.