Customer Reviews

Night Train

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Much has been written below about Amis's Night Train, and it's interesting to see so many divergent opinions about a single book. I wish only to broach a couple of subjects, rather than give my overall impression of the book (I've reviewed it elsewhere).

First, to address the complaint that NT isn't good detective fiction. One writer complained that Amis has failed at detective fiction and should go back to writing modern fiction. Night Train *is* modern fiction. Amis has adopted the voice of noir fiction to tell another of his typically post-modern stories. The bulk of Amis's work is both satirical and thought-provoking. Night Train doesn't stray from this pre-established territory. If the reader is angered because NT's ending is something other than concrete, because things unraveled instead of being compartmentalized and shunted into pretty, neat, explainable bundles, then he or she has simply chosen the wrong book to read and should probably have picked up Elmore Leonard's latest instead. That doesn't mean Amis was unsuccessful in his endeavor.

Second, as to the complaint that the crime remains unsolved: bollocks. I think a close reading (you cannot successfully read this book thinking it to be a simple detective story)reveals that Amis is again satirizing modern society. I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember the essence of parts which discuss the following idea: in an are where motiveless murder is so common as to be mundane, what (area of crime, if you will) does that leave unexplored? Motiveless suicide. I'm oversimplifying what Amis wrote for the sake of brevity, but the seadlings for your own thought are certainly planted within those pages. I'll agree that the ending is somewhat nebulous. Many of Amis's are, I believe because he makes great efforts to avoid hackneyed, cliched writing, and so many endings are typically hackneyed, cliched; try appreciating his ending to his latest short story in the NYer, "The Janitor on Mars," what a bizarre, but similarly provocative little piece of work that is.

Having said all this, I can only give the book three stars for the simple reason that if I gave it more, what would I give to London Fields or the Rachel Papers?

Cheers!

It seems to me that the bad reviews that readers shower upon Martin Amis, on Amazon, are written by people who get so lost in Amis' wordplay that they miss the usually uncomplicated point.

Firstly, Night Train is a beautiful novel in which our hero(?) Mike Hoolihan is forced to examine her self worth. Faced with the suicide of a "perfect" girl, Mike is forced to reconsider whether or not her own existence is worth prolonging. She points out, fairly early in the novel, that suicides are prone to leaving a vast variety of commentary for those they leave behind. These suicide notes vary in style and form.

Night Train IS Mike's suicide note. Some two hundred pages of explaination for her loved ones. In the process she manages to prove that her self image is twisted. She has admirers and friends but views herself as ultimately alone.

Anyone who didn't appreciate this novel, I'm convinced, missed the point that what they were reading was something personal intended for Mike's loved ones. A farewell that was meant, as suicide notes usually are, to comfort, explain and beg forgiveness for their author's actions.

This is one of those books that can not be characterized as a single genre. It is a compilation of mystery, psychological suspense, and an exploration of the impact of death and suicide on those close to the victim. Mr. Amis' writing is superb. He uses a concise and hard-hitting style to narrate the examination of an apparent suicide of the daughter of a police officer. I could not put the book down and I asked my husband to read it so that we could discuss it together. As a clinical social worker and psychotherapist, I found it profoundly insightful about the mysteries of death and suicide.

I found Night Train to be a maddening contradiction. There is some damn brilliant prose in this book. There are a few really trenchant observations about American life. And then there are some really clumsy, hack handed passages that come across as mean spirited and off target.

But more than anything else is the ending that really isn't. The reader can take the last few paragraphs of the book and interpret it in a lot of ways, far more than most books. At the end of Night Train, the reader finds himself looking at himself through the reflection of a fogged fun house mirror. The image that the reader sees is not about the characters in the book, the very thin plot, or bromides about American culture. Rather, what we see are ourselves, our questions about what really happened, and our realization that often brilliant prose has led to unanswered questions and our own faces staring back at us.

I seldom write a review by reading other reader's comments, but I was so torn by this book that I wanted to see if I had just missed the point.

Two things stood out after reading a dozen or so reviews. First of all, the stratification of rankings is almost symmetric across 1-5 stars. That's really unique for Amazon rankings, where usually a book is either well liked or disliked. Secondly, the things the 1 star reviewers disliked vehemently were some of the same things the 5 star reviewers lauded.

I have NEVER seen that before in any Amazon review.

If you're a fan of detective novels or noir, I'd skip this book. The lack of definiteness at the end is going to drive you nuts, unless you're a closet deconstructionist in your philosophical nature.

If you want to read something different by an author who can deliver a half page of prose that glimmers in the mind far longer than most books, you may well like this. But don't get hooked on finding out what really happened. Amis expects you to come up with the answer(s) and to learn about yourself as you turn over each one in your mind.

Not one writer in one hundred today ends a book like this and the effect is jarring, to say the least.

_Night Train_ is a very short novel (some 40,000 words). It's set in an unnamed U. S. city which seemed possibly to be vaguely based on Portland, Oregon, to me, though I actually think Amis intended it to be set just "anywhere" in the U. S. It's narrated by a veteran policewoman named Mike Hoolihan. As a favor to her former boss she agrees to investigate the suicide of his daughter. The mystery is that his daughter seemed perfectly happy: she was a very beautiful woman, a successful astrophysicist, happily involved in a long term relationship with a nice man, on good terms with her family -- there is no hint of a reason for suicide. Her father wants Mike (an unlovely alcoholic orphan, with a history of trouble with men -- contrasts not an accident) to find a reason to call the suicide murder, and to pin it on someone, maybe the boyfriend. Mike loyally makes an effort to do just that, then she begins to dig more deeply into the secrets of the dead woman's life -- and hints of problems start to appear. Was she having an affair? in trouble at work? undergoing treatment for depression? All are hinted at, but nothing hangs together -- until finally Mike comes to a realization of the real truth, which is rather existential and dark and a bit scary, if maybe also a bit unconvincing.

Amis is a good writer, and the novel is an interesting book to read, but it's not really successful. The philosophical point he strives toward seems worthwhile and at least worth positing. So the resolution of the novel, if as I said perhaps a bit unconvincing (particularly the way Mike reaches her conclusions) is acceptable. Where the book really fails is in Hoolihan's voice, which is a wildly offbase sort of faux-Americanese. The most obvious illustration is right at the beginning, when Mike Hoolihan announces that "I am a police" and asserts that that is what American cops call themselves. Not that I ever heard. I'm not sure why Amis chose this voice to tell his story -- but I found it distracting.

this book is more a philosophical inquiry into human existence than it is a detective novel. try to seek out Janis Bellow's "review" on Night Train - you will be illuminated by her insight: the complexity of Amis' playing field (both of style and theme) here.

p.s. linda hamilton's reading is superb! her audio version of the book foreshadows a great screenplay (possibly a movie deal?) for night train.

A thoughtful one from Mr Amis. I saw an interview with him, and you can tell he's worried about age, about death. And you can tell in the novel. I found certain parallels with Camus' Outsider. The same inevitable sense of alone. Even in the apparently perfect life. Us, the universe, and 'the seeing'. An existentialist's novel for sure. I don't read detective fiction, and I'm British, so I've no idea about affected genre, or language, but I liked the novel. There's a spareness and surprising quality to the sentences. They have a nice rhythm to them. And I agree with the reviewer who said that it was a novel about contemporary society. I'm sure that's true. We are so concerned with perfection, with 'keeping up appearances', with ourselves, that we've forgotten what it means to be non-existent. How could the world survive without me?

I knew I couldn't miss on this one: one of my favorite writers decided to take a dip in my favorite genre, i.e., Martin Amos and his Police Procedural.

Jennifer Rockwell, daughter of police Colonel Tom Rockwell has committed suicide. Or has she? Three bullets? Colonel Tom put Detective Mike Hoolihan on the case instructing her to find something "he can live with, but not this." Yes, Mike is a "she," a hard bitten veteran cop, former alcoholic until her liver gave out for good, chain smoker who most people take for a man when they talk to her on the phone. Luckily for the reader, Mike is also a sensitive, observant, articulate person. I say "luckily" because Mike is our first person narrator. A few of Mike's observations:

"-Make no mistake, we would see it if was there---because we want suicides to be homicides. We would infinitely prefer it. A made homicide means overtime, a clearance stat and high fives in the squad room. And a suicide is no damn use to anyone."

"Sometimes I have the look of a grave child trying not to cry. ---it's more like defiance than self-pity. When I don't understand something, it makes me feel defiant. I feel: I will not be excluded from this. But of course, you are excluded, all the time. You just have to let it go."

Martin Amis's edginess and pyrotechnical writing are all in play in "Night Train." But color the book dark, and call it noir. I think Pelecanos fans might enjoy this one-there is a similar feel of recognition and resignation. Five stars for the writing, three stars for existential ending.

I'll spare you a full review of this novel. Instead, I only want to draw attention to the main focus of the text. "Night Train" isn't by any means an American detective novel; it follows more closely the lines of existential philosophy and employs only a few shreds of mystery to deepen the impact. The story, characterization... none of this mattered to me. The novel is one of disastrous personal failure and tremendous universal victory. This alone places the "Night Train" in the top ten most dynamic novels of the last five years.

It goes without saying that Night Train is well written. Amis is one of the most gifted craftsmen writing today. There seems to be more disagreement, however, over the quality of the storyline.

But this is really a fascinating mystery. Not a traditional one, mind you, with outlandish perps and grisly body counts and twisted motives. Instead, it is a mystery of the sort we each live our lives solving: the meaning of our own existence. This is a existentialist essay masquerading as an entertaining whodunnit.

Make no mistake about it: by the end of the book, the mystery gets solved. The ending is comprehensible if, like Hoolihan, you are prepared to drink yourself into oblivion. (If, on the other hand, you (like Colonel Tom) are unprepared to face the facts, you may allow yourself to be distracted by spurious clues....)