Martin Amis

Dead babies

Bad Girl Bex

Just finished reading this about a minute ago and I'm still giggling. I probably liked this book, far more than I ought to, because it really is just a rapid assault on the senses, throwing every kind of wickedness, indulgence and debauchery the reader's way. I don't know that anyone is supposed to 'like' it per se, more that one should find it equal parts shocking, revolting, hilarious, tragic and frustrating. There's no point in me rehashing the plot here as many others will have already done so in previous reviews, so I'll just be brief in trying to capture what I thought and felt about 'Dead Babies'. 

Loved the name, before I even began to read the damn thing. Anyone who knows me, knows I like my humour bitingly sarcastic, slightly surreal and steeped in very low taste; so naturally this was a book I was bound to want to check out. Amis has a truly unique and immediately identifiable voice. If you've ever heard him speak in real life and then go on to read his work, you'll never quite get that glitteringly cold, genteel snark from behind sharpened fangs, out of your head. You'll hear him narrating every book of his that you read - which actually really works for 'Dead Babies' because his coolly loquacious wit and derision ooze from ever paragraph, every sentence, every heartbeat from the page. 

Everyone in the book is a complete shitebag, but incredibly well drawn. They jump off the page formed with finesse and attention to detail, managing to appear both insanely unbelievable and devastatingly real at the same time. The little moments Amis takes out to remind us that these aren't real people, merely characters of his creation...puppets in his little theater of fiction, are amusing and take nothing away from the immersiveness of this novel. Yeah, the ending wasn't written as well as it could have been. I understand that this was Amis' 2nd novel and I imagine that whether he would like to admit it or not, the pressure of the reputation his father's literary success, may well have caused Amis to rush to get this out, published, bought and reviewed in order for him to help cement his own presence in the literary sphere.

The Johnny sub-plot as a kind of Agatha Christie country-house murder-mystery, could have been worked better - foreshadowed more subtly, given more room to expand at its own pace and tightened up at its finale - but I have to admit that even though I had guessed at Johnny's real identity earlier on, the big reveal did too much telling at the conclusion, rather than showing, slyly and more deftly throughout the novel.

One more thing before I go. This is by no means the most skillfully written book, nor the most artfully imagined storyline. It is thoroughly displeasing in parts and definitely not the right sort of book, for a large portion of the population. However, some of the writing in it is spellbinding. The gently woven cadences in Amis' descriptive prose, lull you right into the exact frame of mind one expects the characters to themselves be experiencing. It is bitingly satirical, of its time yet utterly relevant (I really only figured out how old the book was when Andy bought two double brandy's at a pub and paid for them with two £1 notes!) and deliciously hyperbolic. It's Wodehouse written by Irvine Welsh; it's PD James meets Hunter S Thompson. It's crazy, it's hilarious, it's disgusting, it's depraved, but it's hysterically funny, wickedly entertaining and very Mr Amis, actually.

Dead babies

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