London Fields

by Martin Amis

book data

1,677 ratings, 3.84 average rating, 188 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		30%
4		36%
3		22%
2		7%
1		2%

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published

November 26th 1990 by Penguin Books Ltd (first published 1989)

details

Hardcover, 480 pages

isbn

0140115714 (isbn13: 9780140115710)

description

In this sprawling, gritty, ambitious work, Amis relates two murders in the making. One is the self-orchestrated extinction of Nicola Six, who persuad…more

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Aug 12, 2007

R. rated it:

(review of isbn 0679730346)

bookshelves: 2007

Congratulations, little 470-page tome. You outbid Ada in the little push-pull contest I had going on all evening. It was either you or her. You won. I hope that you don't disappoint me. You won't disappoint me.

Your author is, according to the jacket copy, "a force unto himself".

I imagine your author looks in the mirror, flashes his teeth and nods, "I am a force unto myself!" before going about his day, drawling in American to his American wi...more

Like this review? yes (7 people liked it)

2 comments

Aug 10, 2009

Jessica rated it:

(review of isbn 0679730346)

bookshelves: crazy-ladies, crime-and-punishment, love-and-other-indoor-sports, substance-related-disorders

Read in August, 2009

What a fun fucking book. I blew off everything today (and, well, most of the week) just to read this book, because it was that fucking fun. God, I loved this book. I just read it nonstop, and when the recurring irritation that is my life did tear me away, I kept thinking about what I'd read, and just ached to go back to read it some more.... I went at this book hard, folks, and now that I'm finished, I feel like I barely can walk across the room. Maybe this qualifies as Too Much Information, but...more

Like this review? yes (28 people liked it)

8 comments

Jun 03, 2007

Michael Shilling rated it:

(review of isbn 0679730346)

People often say Martin Amis in the brilliant guy at the party you avoid, but Amis actually can roll a great joint and cut a fine rail. Also he knows secrets about the host that you'd have never suspected. His breath is terrible, though, and he keeps trying to kiss you.

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

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Nov 20, 2008

Manny rated it:

(review of isbn 0886192366)

bookshelves: too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts

Read in January, 1998

This book just has it all.

Um. That's not very specific. I suppose I'd better say what "it" is. Well... off the top of my head: an engaging femme fatale, an equally engaging anti-hero - Keith Talent is an asshole's asshole - a dangerous baby, psychic powers, explicit descriptions of sex and competitive darts (though not both at the same time), references to nuclear and climate-related apocalypses, witty and stylish writing. Pause for breath. I know I'm missing a bunch of th...more

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

16 comments

Sep 25, 2008

Jonathan rated it:

(review of isbn 0099748614)

recommends it for: Misanthropes

This incoherent tale oozes malignant intent and world weary cynicism. None of the main characters have any positive traits whatsoever. They are variously weak, selfish, greedy, naive, manipulative and violent. The story is punctuated by the self-conscious musings of a narrator who is both seperate from, and part of, the story. These interruptions become grating after a while and are superflous to the narrative.

Amis's representation of Keith Talent serves as a crude representation of...more

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Apr 08, 2007

DRM rated it:

(review of isbn 0099748614)

Read in February, 2007

This book and I have quite a history. I'm a big fan of ex-Ministry member Chris Connelly's solo work and he mentions this book in two of his songs ("London Fields" and "Nicola 6") which perked my interest in Amis. I started reading this in June of 2006 and gave up as I had no idea where it was going. I LOVED the atmosphere of it but it felt sort of like the book equivalent of a British Wong Kar-Wai making an 8 hour movie about London low lifes. But I couldn't get it out o...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

1 comment

May 25, 2007

Eric rated it:

(review of isbn 0679730346)

Read in January, 2000

recommends it for: Anyone who loves the craft

I loved this book and it is one of my top ten favorites of all time. The novel is sheer virtuousity, and what might suffer under the weight of showiness and pretense really works here because at the end of it all, it is so well written. And the book turns on you, an unexpected ending that made me read the book a second time after the first to see it with more narrative clarity--thematically, the reader and the protagonist suffer from the same limited omniscience—they are in it together; a po...more

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Jun 11, 2008

John rated it:

(review of isbn 0099748614)

Read in June, 2008

recommends it for: anyone intelligent

Amis almost defines what is good about post-modernism in literature for me. Here he examines London in the late 20th century, touching upon themes like class, sex, money and Anglo-American cultural differences. Memorable to me are the descriptions of Marmaduke (the baby from hell) and Keith Talent (the yobbish darts player). As in all Amis's work, the language never disappoints; he is a worthy successor to Nabokov in this regard. A dark and sometimes highly cynical book, this is not for everyone...more

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Sep 23, 2009

Emma rated it:

(review of isbn 0679730346)

bookshelves: alienation, fiction, london, madness-mental-illness, misanthropic, read-last-century

Read in January, 1999

To be honest I read this such a long time ago that I have really only retained impressions. One of the misanthropy (or 'nastiness') that it's steeped in. Another memory is a line (I believe it's about a rape?) that says "his two tongues entered her two mouths" or something like that; a little piece of violent ickiness that often comes to mind in inconvenient moments, and for which I resent Amis. But now I'm reading Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, which (although I'm not...more

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Jun 25, 2009

Pierce rated it:

(review of isbn 0099748614)

Read in June, 2009

It's possible that in the past I may have represented myself as someone who has read London Fields. That's because I absolutely thought I did! I was confusing it with Money, or the Rachel Papers, or something. All I know is that every time I saw it on a bookshelf I checked it off and moved on.

So recently a particularly ugly cover made me pick it up and, scanning the first few pages, I realised I'd never read it at all! Exciting.

And holy shit. It was pretty amazing, as an Amis...more

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Feb 26, 2010

Becky rated it:

(review of isbn 0099748614)

Read in February, 2010

I can't figure out what to make of this book at all. Either Amis really despises people or he finds them beneath him... or maybe he loves them but doesn't want to admit it to the rest of us. It makes for a rather schizophrenic novel, where the main male protagonists are unwitting, a little thick, but generally likeable (if not quite stand up chaps). Their downfall is Nicola Six, the devious and devilish young woman who has foreseen her own death at the hands of these gentleman. To the end sh...more

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Feb 02, 2009

Rob rated it:

(review of isbn 0099748614)

Read in June, 1995

I like some of Amis's book and he knows how to write a dazzling sentence, but this is a book full of mean spirited characters and a snobbishness towards the working class that predates the "chav" phenomenon by almost twenty years. Keith Talent, lauded in some quarters as a brilliantly drawn depiction of a oafish bully, is infact one of the most one dimensional and cliched characters I have come across in modern literature. Read "Money" instead.

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Jan 07, 2010

Brian rated it:

(review of isbn 0886192366)

The English literati (and London literati in particular) may not enjoy this novel's tag as the quintessential London (and, thus, English) novel, but, alas, it remains as such. Peter Ackroyd, in _London: A Biography_, characterized the city not as a place, or a geographic location, but as a living being with limbs outstretched and bodily systems disparate yet integrative, ever-changing, wounded, healing and effluent, but alive nonetheless. This book, more so than any book by any English writer ...more

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Jan 16, 2010

Jeffrey Zeldman rated it:

(review of isbn 9029080760)

Rereading London Fields. Hated it in 1989 (misogyny, too-clever writing, obtrusive narrator). Twenty years later, it's time to give it another shot. (Especially because I read it in an altered state, don't remember what I read, and am a different person today.)

UPDATE: Nearly finished. As the novel slowly, slowly, slowly draws toward ironic tragedy, every speck of it stage-managed by the genius writer and his overly symbolic alter ego the intrusive, dying narrator, I find myself readi...more

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May 17, 2007

Alex Cunningham rated it:

(review of isbn 0099748614)

recommends it for: not the squeamish

I can't tell you how many times my stomach writhed inside me while reading this book. Is it possible for a fictional character like Nikki Six to trap a real human reader thus, to leave him hollow and dry like a peanut shell?

This is _not_ a book to be taken lightly.

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May 22, 2009

William Huberdeau rated it:

(review of isbn 0886192366)

Read in June, 2009

Ooooooooook, sooo.... it's a very hard book to read. And it's certainly something unique. The writing style is... lofty? It's hard to read definitely. I was really struggling through it. So often I had no idea what was going on, and I'm kind of stuck on that right now. The ending kind of... the twist comes very suddenly and with no hints I was kind of like "Ummm... ok... definitely don't even really care."
Now this is a solid 4 stars. But it is DEFINITELY not 5-stars. I kn...more Ooooooooook, sooo.... it's a very hard book to read. And it's certainly something unique. The writing style is... lofty? It's hard to read definitely. I was really struggling through it. So often I had no idea what was going on, and I'm kind of stuck on that right now. The ending kind of... the twist comes very suddenly and with no hints I was kind of like "Ummm... ok... definitely don't even really care."
Now this is a solid 4 stars. But it is DEFINITELY not 5-stars. I knew from about half way through the book that I was going to give it 4-stars. I knew it wasn't going to get better, but there's just so much going for it aside from what I've complained about above.
At first I really hated the narrator-author's interruptions to talk about the progress of the writing of the story. But as I got accustomed to it, it was relieving to read something new. The narrator-author explains at the beginning that it is a story that is actually happening as he is writing it. It's a supposed non-fiction story. Though it's not. But it was interesting because with him appearing and disappearing into/from the book the reading experience really engages you. Like you are really watching a story unfold. As opposed to reading a story, you know? I really liked this about the book.
The action of the story is very slow and actually not too too complicated. No big bombs dropped (figuratively speaking) or true "WOW" moments, but that's all part of it being a very realistic novel. As in realistic, as opposed to plausible (which it also is).
What replaces the action as what is most important is the writing itself. It's a neat style. Maybe some sort of English melodrama (English as in England). Something different from Faulkner's Southern gothic. The urban England version of Faulkner. The writing was in a close first---a very close first person. Then there was the actual first person during the narrator-author's interruptions. It really spoke the characters well.
And great characters! I read some other people's reviews of these characters and they show no empathy for them. But even though these characters aren't necessarily people you'd like to meet, a reader has to understand that you need to accept all characters and kind of... have tolerance. I mean, even Jason from Sound and the Fury. You can hate him emotionally, but you can't judge him on a higher moral ground.
And there is sympathy to be found in these characters. Keith for example, I couldn't imagine how he'd kill Nicola! That's part of the build up to the twist at the end (which again bored me terribly because of how unexpected it was). I mean, to see someone so incapable of murder, someone so bad at being a bad person, someone just being a bum.
Nicola's character was a little over-the-top. Kind of a Hot-Topic girl who develops her Hot Topic manifesto a bit as she enters some prestigious college. Ok... like imagine like... an impressionable, well-meaning, but over compensating freshman Meridian kid. (I mean, let's admit it. We were all there.) But she pulled it off anyway. That is to be a plausible young adult and to not have made Amis look like a loser idiot.
Martin Amis wrote a book veeeery different from his father's Lucky Jim.

On second thought, I may later update my rating to make this a 5-star. I think as this sits with me I may become more engaged in what it's had to offer. That had been the case with Robert Barnard's Death of an Old Goat.(less)

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Jan 30, 2010

Chris Dejong rated it:

(review of isbn 0099748614)

(Another Africa 2008 read, from the serendipitous reading room. Was I ever surprised to find this book in a missionary reading room. Good for them!). Amis is a brilliant, bitter writer, and this is a story of cruelty, selfishness, confusion and sex, presented under a thick layer of postmodern irony with a heart of crushing nihilism. A brilliant and scary piece of work, with characters (one in particular, a cruel loser with ambition and no prospects) that are with me still.

(I feel ...more

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Sep 30, 2009

Camilla rated it:

(review of isbn 0099748614)

Read in September, 2009

recommended to Camilla by: JRC and the fact that I ran out of books on tour

This is a weird one for sure. A page-turner, definitely, and he has a way with words that makes the book worth reading despite the fact that you hate all the characters (that almost always ruins a book for me, though I think I might be the only person I know like that). Jordan described his style as a constant attempt to describe things in ways in which they never have before-- which could be annoying, but in this case was actually surprising, funny, illuminating. His use of repetition is stella...more

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Oct 17, 2007

Nacho rated it:

(review of isbn 8433966391)

bookshelves: británicos, contemporánea

Read in January, 1993

El mejor libro de Martin Amis. Imprescindible, cínico y muy divertido.

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2 comments

Jun 21, 2009

Frank rated it:

(review of isbn 0886192366)

Read in April, 2009

Amis has a talent for making reprehensible characters somehow endearing and turning those who are simple and kind somehow crass. (But then he's a bit of a caracter himself, from a family of characters, or so I've read.) The only person in this book with any redeeming qualities is baby Kim, and one fears for her future given the household in which she's being raised.

And yet that talent keeps one pushing forward. Stylistically, it's a snappy novel-within-a-novel, with a previously defi...more

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