Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant and chilling book about the horrors of WW II, November 1, 1999
By A Customer
Time's Arrow describes the life of a Nazi before, during and after World War II. The story is told backwards (hence the title), so the book begins with the death of the main character (living a country doctor'life in the US), commences with all the horror stories of the concentration camps in wratime Germany and ends with birth. The remarkable aspect of the story is that it is indeed told backwards: it's not just a set of chapters put in reverse order, but it is told by a spectator withijn the main character, who experiences everything in reverse order. For everyone interested in the human aspects of World War II, and for everyone who can enjoy a highly original book, this is a book you should not miss.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very interesting perception, December 23, 2001
The way I personally rate books is dependent on how much of an impression they have made on me. This one made a big one--why? Because it is written backwards. As in, there is a foreign mind in a certain man's head who travels with him in the reverse of his life. It sounds a little complex, but it's really not. The way this other man without a body (who is only a visitor in this man's brain) views the world is entirely in reverse. People walk backwards. Doctors make people sick (because they are all stitched up when they leave, and bloody when they come in, and this is shown in reverse).
The book is about a mostly overdone topic--the Holocaust. However, this "backwards" approach freshens it up a bit and makes it all the more real somehow. The mass murders and hidious mutilations of the body in the concentration camps are viewed by the narrator as a sort of creation, because in the reverse view the Nazi's take hold of the dead bodies, or the ashes, and make them into live humans again.
While I was reading the book it was a little difficult to keep remembering that things were happening in the reverse. When I took breaks from reading my sense of time was a little distorted, as I kept thinking in reverse(even when not reading the book). This book is certainly worth it if you want something to change your perceptions on the world a little.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Bizarre But Powerful, August 29, 2007
Martin Amis apparently endured much criticism for this work -- it was, at the time of its publication, considered to be a bit of a "flip" take on the Holocaust. These reactions, as the novel's reputation grows and solidifies, have proven to be overreactions. In fact, the novel's climactic, inverted ending (or beginning, if you prefer) is a powerful testament to the brutality of the Nazi regime, and also a prayer for hope.
The technique of the thing itself is very, very concept-y. A bit precious, perhaps, and not perfectly wrought -- for instance, why shouldn't everything be in reverse? Why shouldn't, for instance, entire sentences be written backwards, with punctuation and capitalization, even reversed?
Looking beyond these surface objections, the sensations of reversal are nicely carried throughout. The premise is made as believable as possible, although the identity and purpose of the homunculus within Todd is never made clear. Suffice it to say that it is another of Amis's interfering narrators, like Sam in "London Fields," or "Martin Amis" in "Money." Such characters are Martin Amis himself.
By the by, for all of its structural contrivances and tromps l'oeil, this is perhaps the most perfectly-plotted of Amis's works (with the possible exception of "Success").
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