Picked up my first novel of the year after getting sick and tired of feeling nauseous every time I pick up the Bumper Book of Nazi Germany I'm committed to getting to the end of. So my holiday-from-horror reading is Martin Amis's Other People.

Apart from one incredible short story I read many years ago, The Little Puppy that Could, I've never read anything of his before. I remember watching a Face to Face interview with him on BBC2 once and he came across as very interesting but very cold and depressing. The interview ended with him saying that life was one long nightmare. And he seemed so London-in-the-eighties, all suit and high forehead and money.

But, fuck me, can he write. Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.

Other People - of which I've only read the first few chapters so far, so please don't spoil it for me - is about an amnesiac. The first chapter is her initial awakening into a world she doesn't know at all. The idea of not knowing ANYTHING about this world, that forms are barely indistinguishable and that there is no immediate way to tell what is alive and what is inanimate, from her shoes to the sun, is explored in the most beautifully written and most horrifying way imaginable. What he must have felt like completing this chapter alone I can't imagine, but it must have been something like "Wow, I really am the shit."

I will certainly be reading more of him after this.

Not Crap.

London Fields is a book I enjoyed plenty.

NOT CRAP.

Time's Arrow. NOT CRAP for that alone. Oh, and Money too.
But books like Dead Babies and Success are unforgivably CRAP.

I liked the rachel papers when I read it, but that was about 18 years ago, don't know how it has aged. It doesn't help that it was filmed with Dexter fucking Fletcher in the title role.

NOT CRAP!! If just for London Fields! That made me when I was 16. Proper. And made me love darts. And ale.

Money is a riot. John Self is a completely believable degenerate. Amis wrote no better character.

Like Roth's Sabbath's Theater, it is a perv tour de force, perhaps a bit too long, but never affected.

I'm about 200 pages into London Fields and I just can't get into it. I keep on waiting for when it really draws me in.

London Fields was alright. I liked the darts guy. The part where the darts guy went to fix the hot woman's toilet and there was some crayon shit residue still on the bowl was pretty good. You could certainly read a worse book, but it didn't kick my ass.

No need to thank me for another brilliant literary critique. The pleasure of enlightening the rest of you is reward enough.

Excuse me while I fart.

Rimbaud III wrote:Time's Arrow. NOT CRAP for that alone.

I was very impressed by this book when I read it. I wonder if it holds up.

He really is a gifted writer. But there is too much bad stuff in there. The 80s damage really clings to the books he wrote in those years.

I give him a highly-waffled CRAP.

Angus Jung wrote: The 80s damage really clings to the books he wrote in those years.

What do you mean, Angus? I'm missing something here.