Customer Reviews

London Fields

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This seems to be a novel people tend to either love or hate, and it's not hard to see why. First of all, it is awfully long-and for such a long book, not a lot happens, which is bound to upset some people. Essentially, you have the tale of a not-so-romantic triangle comprised of Nicola Six (messed up psychic sexpot), Guy Clinch (posh, married, naive, and weak-willed), and Keith Talent (underclass wide-boy, schemer, on-the-fiddle, racist, sexist, alcoholic, generally scummy pub denizen), told by a dying American writer in London. Nicola has foreseen her murder at the hand of one of these characters, and thus she directs her own demise by luring them into her tangled web of self-destruction. It's entirely predictable (yes, even the "twist" at the end), but one reads Amis for the journey, not the destination.

The tale is set at the end of the millennium, with some vague catastrophe threatening the world, so it's safe to believe that the trio's story has some larger meaning. The west London of this book is a pretty nasty immoral place, where carpe diem means grab what you want and screw everyone else. As the physical world of the book obliquely slides toward disaster, the moral landscape is already destroyed. The protagonists themselves are stereotypes, the two men representing the opposite ends of the social spectrum, and the most recognizable "type" of modern British male: upper-crust wimp, lower-class lout. Nicola Six exists solely to satirize, and thus subvert, their sexual fantasies with her psychosexual games. Amis appears to be painting a larger picture about British enrapturement with... well, it's not clear precisely what Nicola represents. Capitalism? America? Or just the dreams and fantasies that have led the country astray? And clearly there's some sort of point being made by having Guy's baby be a monster, and Keith's be an angel, right?

Overarching metaphors aside, Amis can write the hell out of sentence, and there's plenty of awfully good description and dialogue here-especially when it comes to wide-boy Keith. There are large swathes of the book devoted to darts, and Amis makes it come alive. Some of this is devastatingly funny amidst the overall dark and bleak tone. My own favorite line is about scratches on Guy's face that (and this is not verbatim, but give's the gist): "made him look like a determined, but inept rapist"). Ultimately the book is too long, and the broad main characters and interjecting author get rather tedious. Still, it's a major work of modern British literature and merits a look if you're into that stuff.

London Fields does require effort. It also rewards it like no other book I am aware of in contemporary fiction. I too aborted reading the book within 100 pages but given the extraordinary effects of Money, Dead Babies and Other People, I felt I ought to give Mart another go. I gave it another go.

There is a depth and richness in this book that I see replicated practically nowhere else in modern writing. Amis himself calls it "The Long Novel". The book reeks talent in its characterisation and language. London Fields is a consummate piece of reality and fiction. It puts certain others of his work - Time's Arrow, The Information to shame and it places the entire works of the pretenders (hey! Will Self! Hi!) just.... subterranean.

Buy this book. Give it the effort it needs to get beyond 100 - 150 pages. Reviews based on non-completion are obviously idiotic. When one gets through to reach this book's extraordinary conclusion, I for one would say it's a full dime shake up the spine; the knowledge that one has read a rare piece of imaginative fiction.

London Fields does character, setting and language in a manner unmatched by Martin Amis' contemporaries or indeed by himself since. Off the top of the wave, it will give you a ride like no other. Buy.

well if it's pretty prose you want you'll find it here, not exactly James Joyce or Cormac McCarthy but surely there is beauty in Mr Amis's choices of words and phrases. the plot is rip-roaring, the troika of Guy Clinch, Nicola Six and Keith Talent are well-drawn, and I've never been more amused (and frightened) by a character than I was by Keith Talent. the ending surprised me, the hard-core darts information was fun and enlightening, and of course the perspective was uniquely, inimitably Martin Amis -- in other words witty, clever, brash, sneaky, scary, tough, tender, cold, hateful, vengeful, admiring, loathing, and self-evaluative.

Mr Amis's books are so different from one another that it's not surprising that some folks will say this one isn't as good as Money, or Time's Arrow, or Dead Babies, or The Rachel Papers. it's just a lot different from those books. London Fields *IS* vastly better than The Information, though.

this was the first Martin Amis book I read, and while my favorite is Money, this one is a very close second.

Please ignore the comments by "A Reader" which occurred on August 15th of 1999, I believe. This person has some sort of puerile vendetta going on against Mr. Amis. "A Reader" may not have even read these books: the same critique is posted to every one of Amis's books on Amazon, without an actual comment on any particular book.

London Fields is a wonderful read. I read it several years ago and elements of the book still rumble around in the back of my admittedly impressionable mind--especially Keith Talent, vulgar sportsman that he is. Words and phrases from LF even worked their way into my vocabulary, and as a college student with a passable IQ and access to a dictionary I had no problem eventually digesting any of the multisyllabic constructs Amis threw my way.

Reading a book with a dictionary on hand really isn't a bad thing, innit?

Okay, so Martin Amis has this thing about language, and it's undeniably impressive whether you can stand it or not. I personally enjoy reading the work of someone who has such command of the language, especially when it reads so well -- page-turning like Stephen King, but with substance like Henry James. (excuse me for that comparison, I'm sure it's bound to get a lot of sneers) Maybe I just like it because it makes me feel smart. (more sneers)

I like Amis in general, but this is by FAR my favorite. Granted: It's wordy. It stretches believability at times. There are places where author ego creeps through. And the subject matter is reeeeally depressing. BUT... I've read it twice, and both times I have come away in the end feeling inspired, sated, and joyously uplifted. It's sick, hilarious (oh my god), peopled with incredibly vivid characters, and peppered with typical quoteworthy Martin Amisisms.

Not only is it a satisfying read because of the mastery with which the story is told, but because of the story itself. Strange, I don't see anyone mentioning what I see as, finally, the most crucial thematic element of the book. It's supposedly about "the death of love," and this point is driven home ruthlessly from the beginning. And yet, even when the foretold ending comes about, Amis manages to put a gorgeous, beautiful little twist on what has been a pretty cynical, harrowing story. In the midst of all this nasty darkness there is, finally, at least one brilliant beam of pure sunlight. That, to me, is what London Fields is really about. "Love happens at the speed of light."

It takes courage and a little patience, but I recommend London Fields with as many stars as you've got.

You'll have to trust me when I say I'm not ordinarily one for dramatic gestures, but I threw my copy of London Fields in the trash the moment I finished it. I read to its tortured, labored "surprise" ending because I like to give all books a fair shake. I threw it away because it would be embarrassing to have it share a shelf with Pale Fire.

I am thrown into a black mood at the state of modern literature. Does postmodernism really excuse flat stock characters, unfunny comedy, and plot that isn't contrived so much as forced at gunpoint (or with a cartool, if you like)? It seems having a collection of themes and tropes is enough so that all the details of setting, characterization and narrative are inconsequential--prop them up in cardboard, they are not the principles. What exactly is meant to be satirized here? I see a collection of characters half-formed, the better to poke tedious fun at, ominous rumblings about the Crisis, millennial angst and the State of the World that manage to remain miraculously vague and incoherent despite ostensibly being the backdrop for all these conveniently literary events.

I may not be Michiko Kakutani of the NYT book review (who also recommended Zadie Smith - this being strike two against her), but I know when a writer has more style and talent than heart, wit, insight, or whatever general expansiveness of spirit is required to make great literature.

Several reviewers commented that this is the most challenging of Amis' works. For some authors this would present a serious concern for bad first impressions. I have not yet decrypted Finnegans Wake and don't know that I ever will. Had I started on Finnegan's Wake, it would have been the beginning and end of Joyce for me. But I started Nabokov on Ada, and became his devoted reader forever. In Amis' case, It feels lucky to have started with the best and most challenging of his works, because that means the rest of his oeuvre can be safely missed.

I've read this book five times now and the precision with which Amis chooses his words never fails to amaze me. Unlike some of his earlier books, he doesn't flex his undoubtedly huge vocabulary just to try and impress - in London Fields it is hard to see how the progress of Nicola Six towards the inevitable November 6 rendezvous could be better described.

Apparently the structure of the novel, which is superficially very simple (girl wants to die, and does) yet incredibly complex, evolved rather than being planned from the start; Amis originally intended this as a short story rather than the weighty opus it is now. Although Keith was in the original draft, neither Guy nor Sam, the narrator, had yet been created. The use of the narrator as a character in his own right is, however, common to most of Amis' work and the novel would not ring true to type without him (read The Information afterwards to see what is missing from the later book). Other typical Amis features are the slightly odd character names and, as in Money, he can't resist a reference to himself (the wholly absent character of Mark Asprey, only revealed in his 'fantastically offensive' letters to Sam).

As far as the final denouement is concerned, it must be one of the most delicious twists ever devised in fiction. The novel can be read as an account of Samson Young's spiritual redemption, in which he realises at the eleventh hour that what he has been writing is wrong - which is, of course, what Nicola had always known would happen. Rather naughtily, Amis throws his readers a teaser towards the end of the book (in one of Sam's tortured dreams) that hints at a different surprise ending to the true one.

If there is a weak or clumsy spot in the book, it is Guy's failure to recognise the significance of Nicola's imaginary friend Enola Gay and her son Little Boy ('a little knowledge here just might have saved him'). Presumably this was done in order to contrast Guy's naivete further with Nicola's deviousness and Keith's working-class savoir-faire.

There are some great comedy moments, including of course Keith's darts obsession, his late-night video viewing (six hours' worth fast-forwarded in 20 minutes while looking for images of sex/violence/money), his women and his appalling diet of ready-meals. His succinct explanation of why darts players only drink lager is so logical that it almost has to be true.

Overall, though, London Fields becomes progressively darker in tone and the humour vanishes abruptly in the last act as Sam realises too late that 'a cross has four points, not three'. Nevertheless, the endpapers are not entirely bereft of hope, particularly for Kim Talent, Keith's baby daughter, whom Sam has rescued from abuse by her mother, herself abused by Keith.

There is a final 'whydoit' question at the end of the book, addressed to Mark Asprey, who it transpires was, and still may be, Nicola's lover. Did Asprey set up the whole thing? You will have to make up your own mind, for, as with Fielding Goodney in Money, Amis leaves no real clues as to a possible motive.

I spent about an hour reading all 74 reviews; it's not kosher to write a response to reviews...I thought the book was perfectly plotted, the relationship between the main characters had a wonderful symmetry, MMF or MMMF; a tad like Seinfeld except it wasn't topical, the story is mainly about Keith's quest for dartboard supremacy. I think the story could have gone on forever: Martin Amis had to murder Nicola just so he could meet a deadline.

My big hassle with it: if you were to contrast the writerly technique of Martin Amis to that (fiend and literary hero) Jack Kerouac, it really must be torture to write in Martin's style. The drafting, the editing, the reading, and redrafting. Martin's writing is probably fouled up by automation: when he wrote The Rachel Papers, it weighed in at 200 pages. By the late eighties computer he's got it up to nearly 500 pages, and by the mid-nineties he was getting nearly half a million bucks for a book...not bad.

But it's good fun: even minor characters like Analiese (Anal-liase) Furnish, are supplied with perfect names, and it all fits together like a mortiose and tenon.

It's really written for the joy of writing. He comes up with very specific characters, the relationships between the character drive the story...he doesn't write the thing because he has an important story to tell; it's obvious that he enjoys reading his own stuff; it's a hoot, it's better than standup comedy.

Good read. The plot is sort of metaphysical and a little stretched: Nicola Six is going to be killed by someone (we don't know who) because of her sexual deviations. She is basically arranging her own murder. Two characters are chosen by her for this mission, and she is building up her scheme to get them to hate and eventually kill her.

It is a nice relaxing read. Authors narrative is catchy and skillful, his sense of humour is great. Characters are very alive and not trivial. I was a little disappointed by the ending, but overall aftertaste of the book is good. I will read other books by Martin Amis.

I enjoyed this novel. I stayed up late reading it over six nights. Yet, when the structure of the story began in the last sections to erode, and when the climactic fireworks, on a variety of levels, that Amis had taken such glee in arranging failed to spark as I'd hoped, I felt let down. Much of the novel's capable of five stars. I had just read Nabokov's "Ada" & "Bend Sinister" (also reviewed by me), so I was curious to discover how an author considered an heir to such narrative pyrotechnics would fare.

Amis appears to strain to get into the head of his louche character, Keith. I sense that the author's milieu's closer to hapless Guy, and perhaps Amis had to overcompensate. As others have remarked, it's as surprising to us as to Nicola when Guy fails to catch the atomic references early on, and after his Oxford degree! Also, the level of moronic panting that Guy's reduced to in his admittingly entertaining pursuit of Nicola does strain credulity as well as his trousers.

Still, there's so much that keeps you reading. You learn a lot about darts, erroneous or factual. Baby Marmaduke's reign of nursery tyranny continues to delight Amis as he ups the infant's cruelty, and this gets a poignant (not a common sentiment in this heartless saga) balance in the cries of little baby Kim-- these moments turn heartbreaking, if ultimately unresolved off-stage, to my confusion. There's also confusion in the apocalyptic set-piece. "The Crisis" of a lower and nearer sun fails to end after the wonderfully evoked eclipse on "Horrorday," and I was never quite clear about what the American president's wife and the geopolitics and the economic stagnation all added up to. Not to mention who Nicola represented: there's hints scattered but these never cohere.

Similarly, Samson Young's character never gains the clarity of the main three characters which he purportedly's writing about; his own failed romance with Missy and the failed pregnancy fizzle and you're never quite sure what occurred the six days he was or was not overseas while Mark Asprey's back in the London flat. Nicola, of course, adds mystery at every level, and above all, despite the novel's flaws, her endless tease of not only Keith and Guy (the Keats scene's superbly demented) makes her unforgettable. I get the sense that Amis created a character larger than the novel itself, which considering the heft and scope of this warped Waugh- meets- Nabokov epic remains quite a feat, for all its inevitable and unfortunate consequences for the novel.

As Sam admits late on: there go my "unities." Amis may have been too clever in outwitting himself, like Guy playing chess with his computer, into a narrative corner he could not escape. It's an unresolved mess, but a witty panorama of a future (already in our past, pre-Internet and pre-cellphones) that two decades ago, with its vague terrors on a global level and the environmental decay and personal fatigue appears to be inching ever closer.