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London Fields

3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 · rating details · 4,876 ratings · 357 reviews

London Fields is Amis's murder story for the end of the millennium. The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts. Or is the killer the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch?

"A comic murder mystery, an...more

Hardcover, First edition, 470 pages

Published September 21st 1989 by Jonathan Cape (first published 1989)

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Jan 18, 2013 Paul rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

THE BRITISH CLASS SYSTEM

At the top there is the Monarchy and the aristocracy. They're all still there, no one has gone away. The 14th Duke of Banffshire and all the scurvy crew. The only good news is - they're not allowed to hunt foxes any more ! Yay - one and a half cheers for democracy! So that's the Upper Class.

Next step down is the complicated Middle Class which is divided into three :

Upper middle : these are your professions, of course. Judges, lawyers, bankers, etc. There was a radio inter...more

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May 21, 2011 Krok Zero rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: spring-2011

My first Amis. Didn't disappoint! I'm not sure it pulled off its staggering ambitions but it's very easy to enjoy, if you enjoy elaborately witty studies of human perversity and pain.

Character-driven is a term you often hear applied to fiction. It applies here more than usual, and in a different sense. The characters are stock types that Amis has elevated to the realm of literary internality without really changing their status as stock types. They're familiar to anyone familiar with crime stori...more My first Amis. Didn't disappoint! I'm not sure it pulled off its staggering ambitions but it's very easy to enjoy, if you enjoy elaborately witty studies of human perversity and pain.

Character-driven is a term you often hear applied to fiction. It applies here more than usual, and in a different sense. The characters are stock types that Amis has elevated to the realm of literary internality without really changing their status as stock types. They're familiar to anyone familiar with crime stories, or with noir, though London Fields is neither, and only pretends to be the former. Ever see Lang's Scarlet Street? You had Joan Bennett as the femme fatale, working with violent lowlife Dan Duryea to fleece poor schmuck Edward G. Robinson out of some cash. In this novel we have Nicola Six (her name a cognate of the guitarist for Motley Crue -- why?) as the femme, working her inscrutably intricate schemes around the lowlife Keith Talent and the schmuck Guy Clinch -- the fall guy. But it's not about cash (though some of that does change hands), and most of the time it doesn't even seem to be about murder, despite Nicola's introduction as "the murderee." There's also a pomo unreliable narrator in the mix.

Why are these people together in one book? Maybe they each represent a different kind of artist. Samson Young, the narrator, is your fraudulent hack. Incapable of invention himself, he attaches himself to a real-life narrative he stumbles upon and lets the book write itself. On the other hand, he's also ostensibly responsible for all of the book's marvelous prose, so at least the formal aspect of his artistry is very legit. He is the analogue to Dr. Charles Kinbote in Nabokov's Pale Fire, this book's clear antecedent. Kinbote was nuts, but as a writer he was a genius, because he was Nabokov. Nicola Six is the artist so dedicated to her life's work that she is literally willing -- hoping, even -- to die for it. Her art is the orchestration of her own demise; she was once an actress, and now plays her greatest role. Creativity as suicide. Keith Talent -- the book's most vivid, fascinating creation -- is the artist without self-consciousness. The purity of working-class poetry innit. Yeah cheers. But his poetry isn't poetry, it's darts. Keith devotes himself to darts with a fervor and clarity of purpose that not even Nicola can match. Her motivations are muddled and complex, while Keith's are simple and unadulterated to the point of absurdity. You can't spell darts without art. That leaves Guy Clinch, too banal and passive to be an artist himself (though he tries to dabble in fiction, which Sam informs us is crap), but perfectly suited to be the lump of clay cruelly molded by the others. In this book all art depends upon the exploitation or subjugation of someone else, and Guy is at the bottom of that food chain.

Have I made this book sound like a heady chore, or a schematic bore? It's not. It's awesome. It's really fun to read. We circle these characters as they circle each other, first in alternating chapters, then with commingled perspectives as their lives become more entangled. They do things that are sometimes horrifying, sometimes hilarious, sometimes pathetic, sometimes mystifying. At a certain point the criminal plot machinations that brought these people together cease to matter, and it becomes a simpler novel about three variously unhappy persons mucking about in each others' lives; it is the world's most finely wrought episode of Three's Company. Sam the narrator lurks in the background, offering a director's commentary track on each chapter. On the margins there is some vaguely sci-fi business about the end of the millennium (the book came out in 1989) and/or the end of the world. It's not clear what this has to do with the principal plot, other than that eschatology was on Amis' mind as he was writing. And that mindset, in turn, informs his depiction of the characters and their cultural context.

There's more to say, but I'm sapped. This is a long book. Life is represented with both starkly direct harshness and bafflingly circuitous style. During the first half I was in love, but I grew impatient as Amis dragged out his drain-circling. The ending does not quite hit that Mamet bullseye of "both surprising and inevitable" -- it's not really entirely surprising, if you've been theorizing even a little bit -- but it is certainly worthy of thought and discussion. There are the mind-teasing layers one would expect of a novel influenced by Pale Fire. There's a lot of sex talk, though relatively little actual sex. There are some faux-profound statements that may or may not mean anything. There's some brilliant writing, some memorable scenes, and some stuff you'll want to skim. Just don't disrespect the darts. You don't never show no disrespect for the darts.(less)

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May 16, 2009 Manny rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts

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 things.

A plot? An endin...more

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Oct 04, 2007 R. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 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 wife, "I think I'd really like to hit America--no, no,...more

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Feb 12, 2012 Megha rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Martin Amis, you are such a tease!

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Aug 15, 2009 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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

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Jun 03, 2007 Michael Shilling rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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.

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Oct 23, 2012 Carlos rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Primer Amis que leí por recomendación de un buen amigo. Tan bueno que me recomendó este libro.

Este libro es la historia de un asesinato. Y Amis nos estropea el libro en las primeras líneas. Voy a dejar que él mismo lo haga:

'This is the story of a murder. It hasn't happened yet. But it will. (It had better.) I know the murderer, I know the murderee. I know the time, I know the place. I know the motive (her motive) and I know the means.'

London Fields va de la comedia negra a un momento de horror,...more

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Sep 25, 2008 Jonathan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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 the tabloid...more

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Apr 08, 2007 DRM rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 of my mind and came back...more

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May 25, 2007 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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 positi...more

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Jun 15, 2008 John rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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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Dec 20, 2012 Warwick rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, london

London Fields is a book with a plot so pointless it made me angry, and a cast of blatant stereotypes. It's distinguished by some flourishes of wonderful writing, and the presence of one character who is one of my favourite creations of modern British fiction.

Initially, there is plenty to like. The narrator – a failed American writer on a house-swap in London – has an engaging line in self-doubt, a brooding sense of millennial disaster, and a neat turn of phrase. The traffic-clogged, grimy street...more

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Sep 22, 2012 Philip Lee rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Money was a fist full of cents better. Money was a touch thinner, too; a trifle more worked-out. Money was plotless, too, too, but the voice of John Self somehow carried you through to the end. This book, which treads pretty much the same ground (the dogshit streets of post-Thatcher London), does so with even less page-turning delight. Oh the page-turning is there, you still want your fix of those sentences... but by about half way through you're yawning and reaching for the switch.

Nicola Six wa...more

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Sep 17, 2012 vbixcv vbixcv rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The most extraordinary thing about this novel is the way in which Amis develops two parallel storylines. On the one hand, the protagonist -an American writer temporarily staying in England- struggles to put his narrative together. On the other hand, Amis gives us a vivid and truthful picture of the writer's creative process.

This is not a book for writers exclusively, but I'd say that writers will enjoy it the most. All our quandaries, blocks, fears, despair, unanswered phone calls from our publ...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Mick O'Dwyer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I started reading this as soon as I finished Lionel Asbo - we were staying in England and it was on the bookshelf of the house we were in. I guess I was hoping for something similar to Asbo and, as always, you should be careful what you wish for. One of the main characters here is Keith talent, who is pretty much identical to Lionel Asbo in terms of chavness and dislikeability. Nothing much wrong there, except it seems a regurgitation of Asbo's character ... or, chronologically, Asbo is Talent r...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Bob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Second of the London trilogy, published in 1989 but seemingly set 10 years or so later in a London tinged with unspecified apocalyptic menace. There's a lack of geopolitical specifics, other than an American president who is more entertainment figure than politician, and I suspect one is supposed to infer that any English novel published in the 1980s is depicting the Thatcher years at their worst.
Amis takes great pleasure in comically depicting London low-life, pub-crawling petty thieves who tak...more

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Dec 19, 2011 Matthew (Bibliofreak.net) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

London Fields (1989) is a murder mystery, in reverse. Set in London in 1999, with an undefined crisis on the horizon, the story follows the sexually savvy Nicola Six, who has a premonition about her own death, as she tries to identify and entice her murderer. A willing murderee, Nicola develops relationships with the yobbish Keith Talent, a petty criminal and darts enthusiast, and the affluent but weak Guy Clinch, driving both men to sexual distraction in an attempt to propel one of them to murd...more London Fields (1989) is a murder mystery, in reverse. Set in London in 1999, with an undefined crisis on the horizon, the story follows the sexually savvy Nicola Six, who has a premonition about her own death, as she tries to identify and entice her murderer. A willing murderee, Nicola develops relationships with the yobbish Keith Talent, a petty criminal and darts enthusiast, and the affluent but weak Guy Clinch, driving both men to sexual distraction in an attempt to propel one of them to murder. The story is relayed by a fourth character; dying American author Samson Young, who socialises with the characters, drawing inspiration for his final book from their ‘story’.

As with Amis’s previous work the lack of motive becomes central to the novel, creating, more than a whodunnit, a whydunnit. An uneasy air hangs over the characters determined path, with Nicola’s desire for death never fully explored. Indeed, as much as a personal death wish Nicola comes to represent the world itself, a willing murderee, longing for death but in need of assistance. Intricately conveyed, the novel’s themes have to be carefully picked from the tangled plot. What at first appears to be a meditation on the potential for nuclear holocaust and its devaluation of human life slowly becomes a metaphor for the act of writing, and the death of the author and of literature itself. The postmodern condition remains under constant consideration in a variety of ways, for example, the abdication of social responsibility due to the filtration of information and stupefying effect of television.

The dialogue and some of the set pieces are assuredly majestic; Amis creates the most acutely observed atmosphere and, through Keith in particular, crafts colloquial discourse of almost poetic brilliance. The depiction of deprived London and its inhabitants is magnificent, engulfing one in the texture and language of poverty, and contrasting it with its polar opposite – a stark reminder of the London’s bizarre juxtaposition, where the lives of rich and poor are so intertwined. As in Money, Amis includes an authorial presence, in this case Samson Young (in addition to absent character Mark Asprey, often referred to as M.A.) who, far from enjoying Amis’s narrative authority, is unable to fully get to grips with the situation. Unlike the unruly lives of his characters though, Amis retains tight control of the most complex of structures, comfortably disguising the skill needed to create such a multilayered work.

Like much of Amis’s writing London Fields courts controversy; it was excluded from the Booker Prize shortlist because some members of the judging panel were offended by perceived sexism within the novel. Certainly, the work is searingly written and does not compromise on its candid and experimental inclinations, although sometimes these are more justifiable than others. Aside from the possible offence some readers might find in the novel the main complaint is undoubtedly the plot itself. Despite being beautifully written, the characters are exaggerated versions of reality and the vehicle they inhabit is at times slow moving and a little tedious. But these are auxiliary issues when compared to the richness and depth of the text as a whole. (less)

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Aug 26, 2011 William Thomas rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Martin Amis suffers from the same syndrome as his father. Kingsley Amis Syndrome. Also known as Ken Kesey Syndrome but not to be confused with Harper Lee Syndrome. A stellar first novel ala the Rachel Papers and then a steep decline into a babbling imbecile who more or less writes as a way to mentally masturbate and force you, the reader, to watch.

This book was little more than a bumbling, mumbling jumble of words. And not very many words, at that. Because within the first twenty pages he uses...more

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Sep 23, 2009 Emma rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: alienation, fiction, london, madness-mental-illness, misanthropic, read-last-century, noir, underbelly

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 far in ye...more

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Jun 25, 2009 Pierce rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 novel. His magnum o...more

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Mar 13, 2012 Ethan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After loving Martin Amis's novel Money I thought I'd travel back a little earlier in his career and read London Fields. Martin Amis has such a strong stranglehold on the English language, his words dance off the page and into your mind. Giving you a perfectly lucid illustration of every detail. London Fields is a reverse murder mystery. Within the opening chapter you know who is going to be killed, but you don't know by who or why.

So who did it? Was it Guy Clinch?!? The wealthy, gullible, inves...more

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Jun 10, 2010 Michael rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own-it, read-in-2010, reviewed

Nicola Six is a woman who provides sexual favors for men. She's also a dominatrix who had had men run from her apartment. Not finished with her thrills, she as been known to chase the men to their cars and attempt to block their retreat by placing herself in front of their cars.

Nicola also has the ability to see into the future and has forseen her death by murder. However, she doesn't know who the murderer will be. She proceeds to make a search to see if she can discover the killer's identity so...more

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Feb 26, 2010 Becky rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 she is...more

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Feb 02, 2009 Rob rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 08, 2010 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 I'...more

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Oct 26, 2012 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Whoever wrote the preamble on this site misses the point completely. This isn't a murder story. This isn't crime fiction, a whodunnit, a brooding Scandinavian epic. This is a tale of the apocalypse - social, emotional, scientific, military; the Death of Britain and, and specifically, London.

Many writers spend their entire career trying to create motif characters which transcend both the boundaries of their own work and access a wider literary culture - in Keith Talent and Nicola Six, Amis creat...more

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Nov 27, 2010 Dan Kearns rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: serious-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Oct 06, 2011 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars

A hyperbolic sledgehammer of a book, vicious and vitriolic. It is a wonderfully inventive post-modern crime story, with a broad and vivid cast of London life, that sadly rings a little too true. I'm not a big Amis fan, but I loved London Fields.

While written in the late 80s, it still feels highly relevant today. Perhaps it would have seemed less so in the middle of Blair's premiership, but the new age of austerity suits book just fine. The dread of imminent apocalypse (a touch of JG Ballard the...more A hyperbolic sledgehammer of a book, vicious and vitriolic. It is a wonderfully inventive post-modern crime story, with a broad and vivid cast of London life, that sadly rings a little too true. I'm not a big Amis fan, but I loved London Fields.

While written in the late 80s, it still feels highly relevant today. Perhaps it would have seemed less so in the middle of Blair's premiership, but the new age of austerity suits book just fine. The dread of imminent apocalypse (a touch of JG Ballard there, particularly The Drowned World with its relentless sun), may have a different flavour these days but it still resonates - perhaps that's just the age I'm at. Certainly, despite the political backdrop, the real apocalypses tend to be personal. I think that's what makes it such a existential, misanthropic and desperate cri de coeur. The plot is clear and bleak (and telegraphed, in all the book's post modern flourishes), but the struggle with the modern human condition is a constant. Which, through the course of the book, you might become convinced is worse than the looming global catastrophe.

It may be slightly overlong, or at least I felt it sagged a touch in the middle middle. The repetition of one incident through three of the players' eyes didn't feel like it repaid the effort. That said, it does have the feel of a book that could stand a second run at it, so maybe that section would open up.

On a personal note, it is particularly interesting to read it, working, as I have been for the last 6 months, around Westbourne Park (I know exactly what he means, 20 years on, about the difficult junction by the canal bridge and bus station on Great Western Road). And my trips to the falafel stand on Portobello Road now have me looking out for Keith Talent-alikes, and Black Cross pub archetypes (it's not a fruitless search).

A good part of the enjoyment of London Fields derives from the cheerfully grotesque characters. The main figure is like a hyper-real Del Boy - bits of it read like an extreme reaction to Only Fools and Horses and the lovable cockney rogue archetype. I would have relished an adaptation featuring the casts and sets from that sitcom in its heyday.

Well, an astonishing searing hurricane of a book, that blows you away in the reading and leaves you feeling worn out and dessicated. That said, for me the final resolution didn't quite satisfy. Clearly you know that not everyone was going to play their roles as scripted, but the climactic switcheroo left some important arcs dangling disconcertingly and also felt a little implausible. I feel like I understand why Amis resolved it as he did, just that it could have been handled a little better. While it was all foreshadowed (a little too) neatly through shoals of red herrings, even that foreshadowing seemed a little too manufactured (a criticism that Amis deftly and disingenuously heads off by his narrator pointing out what he didn't go back and change the beginning to fit his resolution). While his murderee convinced, it was as if, despite the ingrained misanthropy on every page, he couldn't quite conjure up what would bring someone to murder. I guess that's somehow encouraging.

Despite my slight dissatisfaction at the resolution, this is one of the best and most engrossing books I've read. If you were to read only one Martin Amis book (and, honestly, I think that may be enough (though Money is a lot of fun)), make it London Fields.
(less)

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Jul 06, 2011 Daniel Haeusser rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: apocalyptic, literature

Apocalyptic innit.

Over ten years ago I read this novel as part of the Apocalyptic Literature class at Juniata. It was one of the more complex works we covered, and I remembered next to nothing about it, and am glad I took it up again. I believe I got more out of it this time, and find it would still bear another reading easily.

London Fields starts seemingly like a dark comedy, ostensibly passed on as a 'murder mystery' but slowly slips deeper into panicked, inevitable disaster. Along the ride,...more Apocalyptic innit.

Over ten years ago I read this novel as part of the Apocalyptic Literature class at Juniata. It was one of the more complex works we covered, and I remembered next to nothing about it, and am glad I took it up again. I believe I got more out of it this time, and find it would still bear another reading easily.

London Fields starts seemingly like a dark comedy, ostensibly passed on as a 'murder mystery' but slowly slips deeper into panicked, inevitable disaster. Along the ride, Amis never misses a stride, writing an impeccable lively prose that is simultaneously casual, mysterious, and precise.

I have seen no better example of a character-driven novel, and the main characters in this one are a group of unlikable beings: 1) Keith Talent, an ill-educated 'cheat' small-time criminal, adulterer, rapist/abuser, and all around worm of a man; 2) Guy Clinch, the 'foil', a clueless, affluent weakling; 3) Nicola Six, a lying, manipulative femme-fatale, Beast, and murderee; and 4) Samson Young, a failed writer, hopeless and dying, our narrator.

Though character-driven, the events they create (particularly by Nicola) are self-reinforcing, leading the characters inextricably down the path to destruction, to The End. And this is just one of the facets of Apocalypticism in the novel.

Apocalypse literally means Revelation, or an 'unveiling' of a truth. As in the canonical, eponymous Biblical book which 'reveals' Jesus and eschatological matters. Here this theme is brought to the fore through Amis' use of unreliable narration, untrustworthy characters, and even in secondary ways such as discussions on the source of 'news' in mainstream media and tabloids. A similar theme is developed in the postmodern character of Keith who lives in adoration of darts and television, seeing in these a reality greater than the physical world and his human relationships.

But the book is also Apocalyptic in the popular sense of the world, that is in dealing with eschatology, with the End Times. Not only are the characters and their personal lives spiraling towards inevitable final despair, doom also lurks for the world at large, as some great global "Crisis" in the world-at-large is hinted and whispered about by the characters. Even more than the events in their lives, they appear powerless against this, and choose to often ignore it. This knowledge that the world is in imminent danger of annihilation (and for some that their future has a clear expiration date stamped upon it) seems to unconsciously lead them to put even less effort into their own betterment. Destiny innit.

I look forward to re-reading the other works from this class, though some I no longer own and will have to dig up copies somewhere. (less)

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About Martin Amis

Martin Amis is an English novelist, essayist and short story writer. His works include the novels Money, London Fields and The Information.

The Guardian writes that "all his critics have noted what Kingsley Amis [his father] complained of as a 'terrible compulsive vividness in his style... that constant demonstrating of his command of English'; and it's true that the Amis-ness of Amis will be recog...more

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“And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.” — 104 people liked it

“Love is blind; but it makes you see the blind man; teetering on the roadside . . .” — 14 people liked it

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avg rating	preview: London Fields Goodreads rating: 3.80 (4876 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/933763.London_Fields?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1337427273l/933763.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/933763.London_Fields?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]London Fields by Martin Amis[/url]

London Fields

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