Martin Amis (1949–2023)

Well, what can be said about this short but intense novel that hasn’t already been said? It’s an obvious statement that it’s a strange reading experience. Already at page 3 the author describes the confusion that grips the narrator (“Wait a minute. Why am I walking backward into the house? What is the – what is the sequence of this journey I’m on? What are its rules? Why are the birds singing so strangely? Where am I heading?”), and that perfectly illustrates the confusion that the reader experiences. When you start reading the book, you know that it tells the story of a life in reverse order, but to experience it sentence by sentence, page by page as a reader is another matter. I don’t know about you, but I experienced quite a few mood swings: I found Amis’s procedure quite nice and ingenious at first, and quite enjoyed the constant game of deciphering (by reversing the order) what Amis described. But after a while it started to bother me a bit and I even found it banal, edging boring. Until I realized that what was described was anything but banal: the main character is a German Nazi doctor – Odilo Unverdorben, the name alone – who was active in the Holocaust industry and was able to escape to America afterwards (I am now telling it in the ‘wrong/right’ order). Indeed, anything but banal, which is why you often only realize after a while how horrible what you have just read is, while just before you were smiling at the irony of what Amis describes (Jews who walk out healthy and well after ‘treatment’ in the gas chamber, for example). If anything meets the definition of the word ‘mindfuck’ (pardon my French), then this is it.
But is this a successful book? I dare not answer that with an unequivocal yes or no. Ingenious and sometimes downright hilarious, certainly. But also excessively intense, and therefore sometimes even long-winded. If you are into meta-layers, then you have to give Amis credit for beautifully showing how constructed storytelling in general is, or how treacherous it is to simply describe actions, separated from their meaning. Or: how the eternal ethical-philosophical theme of free will is very much tied to the direction of time, and therefore loses its meaning when that direction is changed (or simply reversed). Well done, Amis. However, I cannot say that I enjoyed reading this book very much: it was hard work, sometimes got on my nerves, and the existential relevance (which is always very important to me) seemed far-fetched. Finally: this is an experimental novel par excellence. But I do wonder whether Amis, following J.L. Borges a bit, would not have been better off limiting himself to a novella?… (more)

I've been aware of Martin Amis for fifty years, but had never read any of his work until now. In fact, THE RACHEL PAPERS (1973) was his first novel. Its a "sort of" coming-of-age story and probably highly autobiographical. His narrator-protagonist, Charles Highway, is on the cusp of turning twenty, and looking back at his lengthy pursuit of and obsession with a lovely girl named Rachel. He is about to take his exams to get into Oxford, but he is also reviewing his encyclopedic notes and journals he has kept on this girl, as he flashes back on his childhood and teenage years and other friends and girls he has known. Oh, and he also "thinks" he hates his newly wealthy father, who is seldom home and has a mistress, and is composing, variously, a letter, or speech, to him.

This is not a very "deep" novel (although it is filled with literary allusions - Charles is very well read), and I felt a bit guilty about how very much I enjoyed it, often chuckling or lol-ing at what Charles had to say, or was thinking - about sex, girls, women, wanking, all manner of bodily functions and effluvia - often a combination of disgusting, fanciful and flat out hilarious. And it's a very seventies novel, reflecting the new sexual freedom that characterized those years.

I remembered reading Kingsley Amis's best-selling novel, LUCKY JIM, back in college (extracurricular), and not liking it all that much. Maybe the British humor went right over my head. Not so with his son's book. I laughed. A lot. There are hints of early Philip Roth here.

I enjoyed this book tremendously. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (more)

Started out great, compelling storyline held my interest in the beginning(novel is told from multiple points of view of characters at a death camp during WW II), but considerably slowed and became scattered and trivialized halfway through. I felt the descriptions of sex and sexualized descriptions of body parts were gratuitous and not relevant other than that of perhaps Doll's, but even there his preoccupation with describing his wife was unnecessary and did not add to the story - same with other male characters. I didn't feel Hannah's character was fleshed out enough, throughout. I did like that it didn't have a tidy, happy ending.… (more)