Yellow Dog [Paperback]

Martin Amis (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Random House of Canada, Limited (2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0676976174
• ISBN-13: 978-0676976175
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lighten up, it's Martin, December 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Yellow Dog (Hardcover)

Martin Amis is the Transatlantic voice of the Baby Boom generation, and he sets the pace for other writers. Most of the modern novelists just don't get it. Martin does. He's post-PostModern, and of course "Yellow Dog" is a mess, because it's intended to be a parody of a novel. That's the whole point. Mr. Amis is famous for being famous Amis, and also for recurrent themes in his fiction, none of which he takes all that seriously. The silliness and unavailing nature of fame and wealth ("Money," "The Information"), the meaningless of life (nearly the whole list), and humanity's disappearing illusions as intellectual discovery continues. The point is, there's very little left to write about; you shouldn't quite take it seriously, a grown man making up characters and putting them through their paces. So he indulges in style, for fun, as a jape, heaping opacity upon banalities, fooling around with Joycean obscurity (clearly a major influence) and Bellow-like platitudinous bellowing. He's funny as hell (the stuff about Smoker's life"style" ["his bathroom was the only non-unbelievable room in the house;" who else could write that?]), he writes like a dream, and you simply can't waste your time while you're reading him. He's the best there is, and has been for a long time. If you like neat and tidy plot structures, deadpan sincerity, and no loose ends, read someone else. If you want to have fun and laugh at the world, read Martin Amis. The rest of the hacks do, even when they're trashing him.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Critics too harsh, November 3, 2003

By 

Joseph Grosso (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yellow Dog (Hardcover)

Ok it's not as great as his earlier works such as "Money" and "London Fields", but still better than most books published this year including some short-listed for the Booker Prize. It contains some typically wonderful Amis humor and word play. Yellow Dog is well worth reading: a decent achievement by one of the world's great modern writers.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There'll Always be an England., July 4, 2006

By 

Lynn Cox "LC" (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yellow Dog (Paperback)

Whenever I find myself getting homesick for dear old England I'll just have to refresh my memory with some Amis. The shockingly awful rags pretending to be newspapers. The random acts of violence and petty crime. The drunken, loutish behaviour that has become socially acceptable. The rampant misogamy. The ridiculous anachronism that is the Royal Family. Amis hits all the targets in YELLOW DOG. It's the UK at its worst and fiction at its best.