Customer Reviews

Other People

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This was my first foray into the world of Amis and I am very happy that I tried this guy out. Very impressive. Amis is truly gifted. By his brilliant use of the English language, he gets the reader to look at things his way. While this is the goal of all writers, not many are as successful as Amis. The only drawback, hence the four stars instead of five, is the ending. While it was a very intriguing novel, I was left thinking that I had missed something by the end of the book. Either that, or Amis got a little tired of writing and ended it prematurely. All in all, however, it was well worth the read.

of the fiction that i've read by Amis, this one's my favourite. the opening is unforgettable; hallucinogenic, beautifully observed, carefully ordered. and then on to a cross-section of London life; the drunks with their endless sitting around in the living room; the would-be muggers who, with brilliant nonchalance, are described as doing something so depressing that practically no one else can bear to do it; the moneyed idlers with their tragically empty lives, their sleeping around and their Kamikaze deceits.

one stylistic tic i could have lived without was the author's habit of repeat phrasing sentences. but the only genuinely damp squib in this case of literary fireworks was Amis's slightly juvenile obsession with murderers and murderees. as in London Fields, the ending is abrupt and offhand. having built up such a well-observed portrait of life, the end sequence feels amateurish and out of place, as if Amis doesn't have quite enough faith in his ability to chronicle life as it is, and must fall back on chicanery to hold his readership's attention.

overall though, a phenomenally good piece of writing.

This is one of Martin Amis's earlier novels, written during the phase where he seemed to be aiming to emulate the early career of Nabokov in producing short, stylish novels that play with the conventional rules of reality and narrative structure.

Other People can seem perplexing, but I think it is essentially an interesting angle on the social phenomenon of downward mobility - well off people going off the rails and plunging into messy troubles - which was a prominent one in 1970s London.

The heroine, Mary Lamb goes through an amnesiac process. She finds it difficult to remember nouns, common terms, the names of familiar objects. The whole world is a riddle for her. Thus a newspaper is a 'dirty sheath of smudged grey paper that came and went every day'. She wanders innocently through shabby London society, commented on by a mysterious narrator, leaving a trail of destruction wherever she goes. Through a mysterious policeman, Prince, she learns about Amy Hide, a girl who has disappeared. Amy appears to be Mary's doppelganger, another Nabokovian technique Amis has raided in this novel. Eventually, this strange netherworld comes into focus and it is revealed what has happened to Mary during her life.

Other People may seem odd, but I think it is one of Amis's most stylish and heartfelt fictions. The character of Mary Hide is endearing in a way that Amis's characters rarely are. Amis himself has suggested that 'Other People' can be read as a sort of sequel to his later novel 'London Fields'. Readers of 'London Fields' who know how that book ends will have a useful lead into this one.

'Other People' by Martin Amis is a rather perplexing read. It is well-written, interesting at times, but inevitably feels rather aimless. The story concerns itself with a young woman in London suffering from amnesia. As she (very) slowly pieces together who she was it becomes clear that all is not what it seems. Think in terms of surreal and existential and you'll have an idea what this book is like. Unfortunately the ending is, well, both too much and not enough. I felt disappointed and a bit cheated, as if the author simply got bored with writing the book and simply decided to put an end to it.


Bottom line: a mostly enjoyable read that leads nowhere.

This gripping mistery story focuses a young woman, Mary Lamb, who suddently wakes up in the streets of London and doesn`t seem to remember who she is, apparently knowing nothing about her life. As the plot develops, some hints about her backup life start appearing, and slowly she begins to discover some things about her. Martin Amis manages to create an intriguing and entertaining story about the development of one`s personality and the coming of adulthood, as Mary as to deal with multiple problems and new people that she doesn`t seem to understand. With time, she starts changing and turns into a different, stronger, less innocent and naive person to become a stronger and at times manipulative woman. As she starts recognizing the world that surrounds here, Mary also learns how to deal with "Other People". The book is engaging and compelling for the most part, and Amis writes with a true sense of detailed and credible atmosphere, managing to deliver some witty observations, clever humour and well-crafted characters. The ending, however, is a bit lackluster and really disappoints, given that until there the book is consistently good and surprising. Still, "Other People" is a worthwile pick nonetheless, even if it doesn`t stand out as one of Martin Amis` best pieces of writing.

Intelligent, poignant and amusing.

Often I find myself reading between MA and Jeanette Winterson. In many ways they are rather the light and dark side of the heart. While not as tremendous a book as "London Fields", "Other People" takes an intimate look within the daily human life, often turning these looks to challenge the reader to look within-have you ever noticed that even when you are not thinking of them the dark portions in your heart often caffeinate your mind (I'm merely writing out of my head and not quite quoting).
JW often writes of the soaring heart of Love and Passion and MA as well, yet his perspective is rather more on the pragmatic side-when we break it is nearly impossible to be put back together again. I devoured this novel and my only regret was that it came to an end. I could have followed the amnesiac Mary through her discovery of humanity for months.

I'll admit that Amis knows how to write a page-turner. But there's supposed to be a climax after you turn all those pages. None of that in here.

To me, this book was all about sex, and the many ways it can go wrong. There were so many sordid, miserable sex scenes, I started reliving parts of my past best left unremembered.

I say, no thanks! I'm glad I read "Night Train" first, so I know how gifted Amis is. If I had read this one first, I wouldn't have read any more of his books.

I have read almost everything by Amis (M., that is), and I think that this was just about the worst (the very bottom spot is reserved for Night Train). The language is, as always, very good, but the story seems to have no real heart, direction, or overarching idea. This happens to Amis occassionally, and typically ends in a smugly vindictive showing-up of all society's supposed squalor. Amis has an inveterate inability to see much good in society and, being a writer, this usually serves him quite well. It needs to be tempered, though, with a plot, or a lot of humor, or a point. Maybe I didn't read this book carefully enough, but I certainly didn't find any of these things on ready display here.

Interestingly, Amis here seems to commit many of the same mistakes as Orwell did in Clergyman's Daughter, which has a somewhat similar plot (there is at least one incredibly strong parallel--the amnesiac woman awaking and being taken in by two tramps and their moll). It is unstylized cynicism.

There certainly is a lot of great M. Amis stuff out there, though: Money, The Information, London Fields, Time's Arrow (his most successfully moral book), Moronic Inferno, Visiting Mrs. Nabokov...Success was pretty good. Dead Babies was almost as bad as Other People, but not quite.

It is only fair to say that there are a few very funny scenes, and some descriptions worth remembering. If you could read it in one afternoon, I suppose it wouldn't be a waste of time. Overall, though, it proves what Amis says about book titles in his review of Joseph Heller's God Knows: a great title is an almost sure sign of mediocrity.

This is Smarty Anus at his worst - being clever for the sake of being clever, without having a real story to tell or a real theme to explore. For the first time in an Amis book I've read (and I enjoyed Money and Time's Arrow especially) the language jars. All the pretty phrases and clever metaphors have no soul.

His idea is a good one. Take a woman who has lost her memory and is born into the world as an adult. Let her explore a city, and meet a range of other people, as an adult "baby". This all works well, just as the device of telling the story backwards worked brilliantly in Time's Arrow (which for me is Amis's best book, and maybe that's because he has such a powerful story to tell and the device helps him tell it). Here, I don't feel he has a story to tell - once "Mary" has seen the world and recovered her memory, bang! End of story.

Amis is one of my favourite novelists. This is far from being his best.

Martin Amis has found the ideal forum to compliment his writing in Tina Browns latest attempt to prove that she has all the literary acumen of a Beverly Hills hair dresser, Talk magazine. Lets just hope for the sake of good writing that Suicide runs in Mr. Amis's family.