Wow, just wow. This book was exhausting. Such amped, supercharged writing takes it out of you. Easy read? No way. I had to re-read lines, look up words, re-read paragraphs, go back fifty pages to pick up a thread, pause to laugh out loud. Exhausting. And totally worth the effort.
The story is set in end-of-the-twentieth century London and revolves around the intersection of three characters. Keith Talent is a lowlife small time cheating criminal; Nicola Six is a drop dead gorgeous duplicitous femme fatale; Guy Clinch is a tall, handsome, rich and totally clueless family man. Names of characters, as you might guess, names like Chick Purchase, Trish Shirt, Dink Heckler, Thelonius (very felonious), are reminiscent of Dickens, only edgy. The entire book is edgy, at times foul, but never pornographic. How can a writer be so knowledgeable about the sleazy underworld of cheats, burglars, and drunks? Has Martin Amis spent time in that world, studied its character and characters, its scummy hopeless yet self-satisfied prospect? I don’t know but he presents a convincing case.
Keith’s speech is rife with street slang, expressions like ‘No danger’ meaning ‘don’t worry’ and he finishes many of his comments with ‘like’, or ‘as such’, or innit’ as in his thought on Nicola Six, “Class skirt innit.” There’s a wonderful passage about cheating, which is Keith’s career choice, and what happens when the cheaters get cheated, when everyone is cheating. Later, this comical notion is reprised on the subject of burglary, with the burglars getting burgled. It’s a clever idea, and masterfully laid out with all its pathetic ramifications. Amis presents this seedy criminal pornographic world with sympathy, selectively finding principles being upheld, a dysfunctional society, but a society nevertheless. Here’s a young man who doesn’t figure into the story, but paints for the reader a portrait of the lowlife life. “‘I got into a fight, I came out the wrong side of it, and that’s life. No complaints, Fair enough. That’s life.’....The two girls he told it to listened in postures of mild sympathy. Conversationally, philosophically, and often pausing to hawk blood into the street....this very recent altercation had cost him a broken nose and cheekbone and the loss of nearly all his top teeth....And here was this wreck, back in the pub the very next morning, with his pint and his tabloid, his ruined face....Already he had changed the subject, and was talking about the weather, the price of beer.”
Amis uses a good many words that I had to look up. Some, like ‘recondite’ are good words, ones I’ve seen before an am likely to see again, making good additions to the old vocab. Others, like ‘berk’, are British slang that I will probably never see again, but a quick consult with an online dictionary enriched my comprehension (it means ‘fool’). I was reminded of reading books by Anthony Burgess, which absolutely mandates a handy dictionary and Google to understand at all what’s going on.
I have to say this story is nowhere close to my life and my experiences. I’ve lived such a sheltered life, hee hee. I’m a soft touch for the emotional moment, and this story never came close to evoking a tear. No danger. I give it high compliments. I recently read a book by Martin Amis’s father, Kingsley Amis, which was terrific, and I wondered if the work of the son could measure up. No danger lads as such.
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