The author has provided an insightful and concise portrait of Amis and his work. I can't imagine that Amis himself could have done better. Diedrick really knows his subject.

If you are doing research on Martin Amis, this is a book you will have to consider. Terrifically written.

Prof. James Diedrick has written a great study of Martin Amis's work for both the general and scholarly audience. Complete in its scope, this book is a must for anyone studying Martin Amis's work.

This book is about a ghost. In every story there is a different ghost. Every kid that has lived there has agreed that it's haunted. I liked it because I like ghost stories.

This collection of essays and reviews should be recommended to everyone who has a healthy disdain for the elitism of the literary establishment. Amis writes solely from the conviction of his mind and nothing else; whatever tradition and well-regarded beliefs, he uses for his own argument (which often goes against the tradition). His essay on Cervantes, and the endless boredom that is "Don Quixote" is merciless, funny, and surprisingly well-founded. His reviews for Updike, Bellow, and Ballard read fine as a balanced retrospectives for their oeuvres, and his essays on Joyce's "Ulysses" and Nabokov are must-reads. There are times when he's given to much rhapsodizing and exaggeration. For instance, his analysis of Bellow's "Adveuntures of Augie March", although beautifully written, is hardly objective. It's not much of a review but a paean. These unsavory moments appear in his evaluation of Updike as well. This man loves his Americans. But all in all, these essays represent what best criticism can be: intelligent, highly informative, and always rooted in the common sense.

Good criticism is always a pleasure to read. Particularly when it's written with such flair. Amis has a caustic pen - informed and sprinkled with ironic humor. As the title of this collection suggests, his target is literary cliche, and he has an uncanny ability to ferret them out, revealing that our best author's can slide into this lazy habit. It became obvious to me after reading this text that Amis' range of reading is massive in scope. It seems the man will read and review anything if it catches his attention. Like most of us he has his hobbyhorses and favourite writers, but through the years has given us a wide variety of criticism from popular paperbacks to Joyce's 'Ulysses'. We all have our literary heroes and models, and Amis has his - Vladimir Nabokov. In fact we have an entire section devoted to the man, commenting on his lectures, plays, short stories and the novels. The reader can gain greater insight into literature from well-written criticism, and Amis does this for us. After reading his comments on Nabokov, it became evident to me that my reading of this great author was only superficial and required further study. This is what good criticism should do: provide greater insight and prompt further reading.

This collection contains subject matter other than literature that Amis appears to have great concern; namely nuclear bombs and the sport of chess. Amis is a child of the sixties, when the threat of nuclear disaster was very real. Our new generation seem now to be more concerned with Globalism than the threat of a nuclear holocaust. But the threat is still eminent and should be talked and written about today. Amis' comments twenty years ago are still relevant and awareness of this impending doom should be kept firmly in the public eye. Amis' reviews on the game of chess were also quite informative, revealing to me a whole other world. A good writer can make the most mundane subjects look interesting, and Amis can do this effortlessly.

As a practitioner-critic, Amis is one of the best we have...and this collection more than proves it...good reading.

This collection of Amis'best essays cover a wide variety of topics from reviews of good and bad writers to Hillary Clinton, a hilarious endictement of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, The Space Shield, Chess and an outline of the books he most admires from Nabokov to Vidal. i have yet to read all the essays and have thus far concentrated on the less litertay ones, those that deal with public figures and issues. i found thee alone to be worth the price of the book. As the title of the book suggests Amiks aims his criticism toward uncritical and banal thinkers. it is not, however, a necessarily political book. Amis criticizes art on its own merit and not its relevance to a social or political cause. In this sense it is different than an another excellent essay collection by Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation, who stresses the political obligations of writers.

...although if you want to argue that it's poetry, I can't stop you. It's hard to believe that English is Nabokov's third language. It's also probably impossible to read the first paragraph without having your curiosity piqued. Try it, if you haven't read it already. I'd go so far as to say it's maybe the best opening I've ever read in a book, besides the one from which I took my name.

People unfamiliar with the work will probably approach it with a certain amount of apprehension. It's really about as far from pornography as you can get, though. The author provides a witty and fairly enlightening essay addressing charges of obscenity as an epilogue. The only real problem I can find with this book is that the writing is a bit too floral in places. Even the keenest of literary minds will most likely falter a bit here.

For readability, Lolita loses one star. This, however, is part of what makes it beautiful: it is no way an ordinary book, one that you can read and be done with in a week. For those desiring a challenge, or a refreshingly original style, Nabokov comes highly recommended.

A brilliant book by what appears to be a brilliant author (this is the first book of Nabokov's I've read). The first thing you have to do is disregard everything you have heard about this being a vulgar, exploiting book. It is not. There is no pornography to be found here - unlike Dostoyevsky who describes the deeds of his villain in detail, Nabokov avoids the cleverly set trap that would surely have made this a much less appealing novel. What it is, and much more so than for example "Romeo and Juliet", is a love story. Granted, it is a story about forbidden love; a middle-aged man desperately in love with a young girl, but it is still a love story.

Let me return once more to Dostoyevsky. I found myself comparing Humbert Humbert to Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment" - a person torn apart by his own conscience, trying to hang on to his sanity by telling himself that he is doing the right thing. And just like Dostoyevsky, Nabokov takes us inside the mind of a criminal, as if he is trying to makle us understand him. And the greatness of Nabokov lies in the fact that he pulls it off. Even though you don't like Humbert - and you most certainly will not - you can begin to understand the reasons behind his behavior. Perhaps this - and the beautiful prose, of course - is the true greatness of Vladimir Nabokov.

Nabokov's genius is even more bewildering when you consider that English is not his first (nor even his second, I think), language and that he moved to America well into his adulthood. This is the only thing by Nabokov I have ever read (but will not be the last unless I die suddenly in the next few days) and his prose is extraordinary. It's direct, biting, and yet as lyrical as poetry. This is a book that can be read many times without loss of richness.

The content of this book is notorious. It is also very touching. It's a perfect tragedy. Now then. Lolita is far from being a sugary sweet angel. She has had sex before, she is manipulative, self-contained, seductive, crass...but so clearly through the voice of Humbert (the older man) you can see how young she is, how horribly abused, and how he is slowly destroying her.

Why would anybody ever want to read such a thing? For two reasons (in my opinion). Firstly, as I mentioned above, because Nabokov is a great artist. Very few books I have read come close to his craftsmanship in terms of stringing words together.

Secondly because abuse happens. People will gain control over others and then not act in their best interests. It happens, it can be horrible, and so it makes sense to examine it as part of the human condition. On the cover of this paperback edition, Vanity Fair claims it is "the greatest love story of all time", which seems a little weird, given that this "love" is completely one-sided and involves assaulting, trapping, manipulating and destroying a young girl.

But don't get the wrong impression. The content is dark, but the mood of the book is surprisingly light; and there are distinct passages and descriptions that are downright beautiful.

There are a lot of books around, but very few of this quality. Really. Read it.

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.

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.

Amis has often written about the ego of the literary author, and here he creates the greatest challenge to his own ego: a novel that takes place entirely within the thoughts and actions of a main character, John Self, that is truly despicable, and without redemption. How can a book be readable when its protagonist is such a louse? Other readers have complained that Self`s excesses, including his attempted rape of his girlfriend, detract from the humor. They don`t get it: Amis has made a compelling novel about a character that has zero redeeming value; he has dragged the reader through 400 some pages of the thoughts and repetitive excessess of a character he/she hates. This is truly extraordinary.

As if this wasn`t enough, Amis injects himself into the narrative, offering literary theory which acts as the authors elbow jab to the chops. Is the author morally resonsible for his characters? Amis should hope not. Great book.

In "Money", Martin Amis shows us John Self, a director of TV commercials who is moving up professionally to direct his first movie. The producer of this movie, Fielding Goodney, treats John as THE key player in the deal, despite John's serious drinking problem and his continuing embarrassing and bawdy misbehavior. Until the book's final section, John lives this crazy can't-be-real opportunity, with hilarious Hollywood-style production problems and apparently limitless funding.

In reading this novel, I kept wondering how Self's producer could overlook-even encourage-his personal shenanigans, which would obviously undermine a movie project in the real world. But in the last section of "Money", Amis explains, as he shifts his focus from John Self's hilarious debauchery to plot analysis. Then, a character named Martin Amis, a writer brought on board to salvage a disastrous script, unravels the mystery and reveals the true dynamic of John Self and Fielding Goodney. At the book's end, the achievement of Martin Amis, the author, is clear. He has written a brilliant, entertaining, risky novel, telling a funny and implausible story that ultimately makes perfect sense. Bravo!

This was the first Martin Amis novel that I had read and now I know it will not be the last. The style of writing is so satisfying and refreshing. You ache for more when the book is finished and then return to your favourite sections to indulge in what to me is the best read I have had for years. The story is great and the issues raised are thoroughly interesting and very relevent. I found being a young man growing up in the same world as John Self very revealing. The appearance of a real-life character is most thought-provoking

This book is a catharsis for Martin Amis, son of neo-conservative Kingsley Amis, who questions (notably Christopher Hitchens) the continued ignorance of his former comrades with regard to their demands for government mandated "social justice."

This theme sandwiches a chronological depiction of the crimes of Lenin, Stalin, and their Bolshevik chums against the citizens of Russia and its buffer states. With regard to making the reader retch it's on a par with "the Black Book of Communism.

This intellectual journey from "True Believer" to political agnostic is one outlined in "Twilight of the Intellectuals" by Hilton Kramer as well as in a slew of other well-chronicled tomes mostly written by formerly Left-wing Jewish intellectuals (Himmelfarb, Krystol, etc) who reside in the environs of greater Manhattan. Amis abley follows in this tradition. One can see a similar variation in the contemporary schism which has developed between Jews supporting Israel and those supporting the Palestinians.

The looming question which might possibly be resolved through future findings of the Human Genome project is what causes otherwise intelligent and gifted people to block out new information which might possibly confict with their world views? As Saul Bellow opined, "a great deal of intellect can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion runs deep". This condition is what has allowed so many intellectuals in the West to continue with their delusions about Communism in the face of the overwhelming evidence that its societal implementation into public policy has repeatedly ended in disaster. Would the world not be a better place if the pharmeceutical industry could discover a drug to ameliorate this most heinous of human conditions?

Amis is another in a growing group of such intellectuals who questions why none of those responsible for perpetrating such horrific crimes against humanity, in the name of social justice, have not themselves been brought to justice? Where is the equivalent of the Neuremburg trials for the former Communist leaders and their apparatchiks? This is Amis's question. To this end he relates his discussions with his friend Mr. Hitchens and the inability of said Christopher to even admit to the man-made famines in the Ukraine in the 30's (see "Harvest of Sorrow" by Robert Conquest) as more than "shortages"? We might note that we are seeing an identical famine unfold in present day Zimbabwe with Robert Mugabe playing the role of Lenin / Stalin. Where is the outcry from Leftist intellectuals in the West who purport to be for social justice?

Here's hoping that an increasing number of intellectuals will have the courage to undergo the torments of agonizing self reappraisal by emulating the revelations of Martin Amis. And, if you don't know the story of the Bolsheviks this book is a good place to start.

Martin Amis' analysis of Stalin and the Soviet terror begins with a simple yet probing question: Why can people joke about Stalin, the USSR, and their past "flirtations" with communism, while no one can (in acceptable society) make similar jokes about Hitler and National Socialist Germany? In delving into this and related questions, he draws conclusions that make this title, despite its weaknesses, essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand twentieth century history.

The bulk of the book is taken up by Amis' chronicle of Stalin and his terror. He challenges Stalin's comment that "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic," and draws us into Stalin's bizarre fantasy world -- his war against truth and, indeed, reality. The resultant tens of millions of individual tragedies -- Amis' citations from Solzhenitsyn and other are harrowing -- show how shameful it is that these stories are not as well known as those from the Holocaust.

Uncovering why this is true makes up the final, and arguably most important, part of the book. That's because Amis takes aim at the myth -- so often heard even from people who should know better -- that Stalin's "excesses" were not endemic to communism, but rather were a result of the "cult of personality" that undermined true communism. Amis is having none of it. Terror, famine, slavery, and failure, "monotonous and incorrigible failure" (p. 30) are, he argues, the inevitable "Communist tetrarchy."

For Amis, the lesson of the twentieth century is what it teaches about Leftism and "revolution." Much of this book is intensely personal, because Amis believes some of his dearest friends -- and, for a while, his father as well -- were duped by Stalin and his mania. In wrestling with the ghost of Stalin, Amis is wrestling too with their demons, and his own. After gazing, in these pages, upon the twenty million, his conclusion that "the Revolution was a lie" (p. 258) is hard to refute.

This subject has always been one that vexes me. Why do so many people revile Nazism to such an extent, yet Communism is often seen as a bad joke or "a well meaning system hijacked by bad people"? Amis hits on this theme time and time again, while summarizing the mind boggling crimes committed by Stalin, Trotsky, and Lenin.

Amis paints one of the best pictures of Koba I've ever read. It's short, but it's very effective. In my mind, this book solidifies Stalin's place as the most evil person the world has ever seen. I can't even think of the right adjectives to describe the horrible things he ordered, as described in this book. Amis brings in tons of stories, told by people such as Solzhenitsyn and Conquest. He decries the lack of knowledge concerning the deaths of so many, and how leftist apologists worked so hard to explain or ignore the crimes.

Amis also attacks the popular fallacy among many on the far left that Trotsky and Lenin were good guys. What a lie. Their own words are used to indict them, such as the "enlightened" Trotsky saying that state terror is just another glorious attribute of a communist society. I wonder if he felt the irony when Stalin's henchmen stuck a pick axe into his skull.

Just a great book by Amis that will leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.

London Fields does require effort. It also rewards it like no other book I am aware of in contemporary fiction. I too aborted reading the book within 100 pages but given the extraordinary effects of Money, Dead Babies and Other People, I felt I ought to give Mart another go. I gave it another go.

There is a depth and richness in this book that I see replicated practically nowhere else in modern writing. Amis himself calls it "The Long Novel". The book reeks talent in its characterisation and language. London Fields is a consummate piece of reality and fiction. It puts certain others of his work - Time's Arrow, The Information to shame and it places the entire works of the pretenders (hey! Will Self! Hi!) just.... subterranean.

Buy this book. Give it the effort it needs to get beyond 100 - 150 pages. Reviews based on non-completion are obviously idiotic. When one gets through to reach this book's extraordinary conclusion, I for one would say it's a full dime shake up the spine; the knowledge that one has read a rare piece of imaginative fiction.

London Fields does character, setting and language in a manner unmatched by Martin Amis' contemporaries or indeed by himself since. Off the top of the wave, it will give you a ride like no other. Buy.

I've read this book five times now and the precision with which Amis chooses his words never fails to amaze me. Unlike some of his earlier books, he doesn't flex his undoubtedly huge vocabulary just to try and impress - in London Fields it is hard to see how the progress of Nicola Six towards the inevitable November 6 rendezvous could be better described.

Apparently the structure of the novel, which is superficially very simple (girl wants to die, and does) yet incredibly complex, evolved rather than being planned from the start; Amis originally intended this as a short story rather than the weighty opus it is now. Although Keith was in the original draft, neither Guy nor Sam, the narrator, had yet been created. The use of the narrator as a character in his own right is, however, common to most of Amis' work and the novel would not ring true to type without him (read The Information afterwards to see what is missing from the later book). Other typical Amis features are the slightly odd character names and, as in Money, he can't resist a reference to himself (the wholly absent character of Mark Asprey, only revealed in his 'fantastically offensive' letters to Sam).

As far as the final denouement is concerned, it must be one of the most delicious twists ever devised in fiction. The novel can be read as an account of Samson Young's spiritual redemption, in which he realises at the eleventh hour that what he has been writing is wrong - which is, of course, what Nicola had always known would happen. Rather naughtily, Amis throws his readers a teaser towards the end of the book (in one of Sam's tortured dreams) that hints at a different surprise ending to the true one.

If there is a weak or clumsy spot in the book, it is Guy's failure to recognise the significance of Nicola's imaginary friend Enola Gay and her son Little Boy ('a little knowledge here just might have saved him'). Presumably this was done in order to contrast Guy's naivete further with Nicola's deviousness and Keith's working-class savoir-faire.

There are some great comedy moments, including of course Keith's darts obsession, his late-night video viewing (six hours' worth fast-forwarded in 20 minutes while looking for images of sex/violence/money), his women and his appalling diet of ready-meals. His succinct explanation of why darts players only drink lager is so logical that it almost has to be true.

Overall, though, London Fields becomes progressively darker in tone and the humour vanishes abruptly in the last act as Sam realises too late that 'a cross has four points, not three'. Nevertheless, the endpapers are not entirely bereft of hope, particularly for Kim Talent, Keith's baby daughter, whom Sam has rescued from abuse by her mother, herself abused by Keith.

There is a final 'whydoit' question at the end of the book, addressed to Mark Asprey, who it transpires was, and still may be, Nicola's lover. Did Asprey set up the whole thing? You will have to make up your own mind, for, as with Fielding Goodney in Money, Amis leaves no real clues as to a possible motive.

well if it's pretty prose you want you'll find it here, not exactly James Joyce or Cormac McCarthy but surely there is beauty in Mr Amis's choices of words and phrases. the plot is rip-roaring, the troika of Guy Clinch, Nicola Six and Keith Talent are well-drawn, and I've never been more amused (and frightened) by a character than I was by Keith Talent. the ending surprised me, the hard-core darts information was fun and enlightening, and of course the perspective was uniquely, inimitably Martin Amis -- in other words witty, clever, brash, sneaky, scary, tough, tender, cold, hateful, vengeful, admiring, loathing, and self-evaluative.

Mr Amis's books are so different from one another that it's not surprising that some folks will say this one isn't as good as Money, or Time's Arrow, or Dead Babies, or The Rachel Papers. it's just a lot different from those books. London Fields *IS* vastly better than The Information, though.

this was the first Martin Amis book I read, and while my favorite is Money, this one is a very close second.

While at first I believed that Amis first decided to employ the litterary device of telling a story backwards through a "narrator trapped in the mind" of Dr. Friendly, as I reflect on the book, I believe the litterary device resulted in an effort to explain the actions of "doctors" in Nazi death camps. Whether the egg came first or the chicken did, however, only Amis can answer. I do believe that the author succeeds in showing the reader that the only time the narrator finds fufillment is in the death camps. When Friendly is in private practice in America, the narrator is angered every time a prefectly healthy patient begins seeing Friendly, then becomes sicker and sicker until the patient leaves near death, rarely to be seen again (telling the story backwards) or how his long time girlfriend arrives to a perfectly clean house, then procedes to dirty the dishes, windows, carpet, etc. The only time the narrator inside Friendly's head feels good about the events going on around him is when bodies are brought to Friendly for him to make living humans. In all, it's the strangest book I've read (made much easier once I started reading skipping a few pages and reading the dialoge the in "correct" order), but worth reading in that it gives the reader something to think about: is this an accurate representation of how Nazi doctors saw themselves?

In Time's Arrow, British novelist Martin Amis begins with the death of Dr. Tod Friendly and then traces his life--backwards--into his sinister past. Though the outlandish premise of time running backwards wears thin at times, the story Amis tells is compelling enough to keep the reader interested until the very end...or beginning. ¶Make no mistake, this book is weird. Amis maintains the backwards motif scrupulously, with dialogues printed in reverse order (Amis' one concession to the reader is to render the individual sentences forward) and every event described backwards. For instance: to eat, "You select a soiled dish, collect some scraps from the garbage, and settle down for a short wait. Various items get gulped up into my mouth, and after skillful massage with tongue and teeth I transfer them to the plate for additional sculpture with knife and fork and spoon." ¶The narrator is not Tod himself, exactly, but a sort of secondary consciousness, a spectator who is independent from Tod's thoughts but hostage inside his body. Amis never explains the peculiar identity of his narrator, who views the reverse unfolding of Tod's life as a forward-moving story. ¶Amis uses the backwards perspective to showcase his powers of description. The narrator's ingenious explanations of everyday processes reversed, like eating, are pearls of smart, funny writing. His adept usage of the gleefully oblivious narrator results in delicious irony, as in this exposition on taxis: "This business with the yellow cabs, it sure looks like an unimprovable deal. They're always there when you need one, even in the rain or when the theaters are closing. They pay you up front, no questions asked. They always know where you're going. They're great. No wonder we stand there, for hours on end, waving goodbye, or saluting--saluting this fine service. The streets are full of people with their arms raised, drenched and weary, thanking the yellow cabs." By looking at the world backwards, Amis offers uncommon but resonant observations on the way it functions. Following a story told backwards is a formidable challenge for the reader, though; it makes the head spin at first. Only after much reading do the rhythms of this world of reverse causation start to make sense. ¶It becomes clear early in the book that something is seriously wrong with Tod's life. Ominous signs are everywhere; Tod's many relationships with women, dysfunctional backwards or forwards, suggest he has serious emotional problems. Shortly before (after?) his death, one girlfriend harasses him about "his secret." The readers move onward, conscious that they are getting ever closer to the answers in Tod's past. Amis' structuring of the story to provide suspense through foreshadowing (or after-shadowing?) is masterful. By reversing causality, he turns all principles of literary development on their head. We see the endings first and anticipate the beginnings; we seek the causes of events, not their results. ¶Why tell a story backwards? The text suggests a few answers early on. Recounting a life backwards invites the reader to ask where the life is going. At times, it seems that Amis' message is that the life does not make any progress. The end of Friendly's life is decidedly inauspicious; did he accomplish anything? Through the ultimate futility of all Friendly's personal relations, Amis hints that run either way, life lacks real direction: "I have noticed in the past, of course, that most conversations would make much better sense if you ran them backward. But with this man-woman stuff, you could run them anyway you liked--and still get no further forward." ¶The more positive side of the reversal is that it highlights the good parts of life people are apt to miss going forward. Like the dead in Our Town, who recognize how precious and fleeting life is, the narrator rebukes Friendly for not enjoying his "improvement" in health as he gets younger. For better or worse, the reversal offers a new perspective on life and a new way of evaluating it. ¶The narrator moves with Tod through a series of identity changes, over into Europe, and ultimately to the darkness which haunts all that proceeds it: Tod (really named Odilo) works as a "doctor" at Auschwitz. The narrator describes the obscene murder and brutality which Tod oversees, but in the same cheerfully uncomprehending manner as before. For the narrator, the laws of reverse causation are in effect: the officers at the camp are creating a people, using fire and gas--dead men are taken from the pile outside, Tod extracts poisons from them with a syringe, and they come back to life. Suddenly, the accustomed irony of the narrator's descriptions has become unbearably bitter; for instance: "I saw the old Jew struggle to the surface of the deep latrine, how he splashed and struggled into life, and was hoisted out by the jubilant guards, his clothes cleansed by the mire." Amis achieves the desired effect: by describing the atrocities obliquely, through the upbeat, backwards narrator, the impact on the reader is more painful than it could be with a direct description. ¶Now we understand the primary significance of the book's backwardness. The Holocaust was the ultimate repudiation and reversal of human morality. Its world of gas chambers and crematoriums was obscenely wrong, still inconceivable to most people even today. For the narrator, of course, it was the only world which made sense--a happy world, dedicated to feeding the Jews, joining their families together, giving them property, rights, and even life. Only in a backwards world where taking is giving, where destruction is creation can the Holocaust make sense. ¶Now the puzzle of Tod's later life all fits together; even his assumed name acquires a new significance, if one knows that "Tod" is German for death. "Tod Friendly" represents the two phases of his life: the German years occupied with death, followed by the desperate friendliness he offered as atonement. But Amis makes clear that the "Friendly" years can never erase his sins; he is tied to them by the unbreakable line of time. And though following a story backwards can border on tedious at moments, Amis' sharp writing, intriguing story line, and disturbing study of the Holocaust keep the reader following the trail of the arrow.

oh yeah. this one's a keeper. I read this third in my list of M Amis books, at the time living in Wash DC and commuting by walking & subway. I would read while walking -- wouldn't you think that disorienting, what with time moving backward and all that? well it wasn't, it was so very fascinating that I almost started walking backward as some tribute to the plot device.

The very fact that the protagonist's name is Tod T Friendly should tell you bunches about M Amis. First you have to know that the word "tod" is German for "death." From there you extrapolate that the middle "T" likely stands for "the" and you find his name means "friendly death." Keep this in mind as you unravel Tod's life.

as always, Martin Amis has out-clevered the mass of folks who crack his books and run their eyes over the pages. the synaptic misfires causing some to not or mis-understand this book is *NOT* a fault of the book or its author... it's the reader who's fallen short of the task of understanding M Amis's take on the various historical and cultural events and trends documented in this fine reverse-frame flicker.