Highbrow Magazine - Martin Amis https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/martin-amis en The Best Books of 2012 (and Honorable Mentions) https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1889-best-books-and-honorable-mentions <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Thu, 12/27/2012 - 13:18</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediummartinamis%20%28Knopf%29.jpg?itok=_ZkIZOxO"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediummartinamis%20%28Knopf%29.jpg?itok=_ZkIZOxO" width="480" height="299" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> <em>Since joining the </em>Highbrow <em>staff in 2011, I’ve reviewed a wide range of novels, short story collections and nonfiction. It’s a privilege to share news of books I’m enthusiastic about and to hopefully bring attention to authors unknown to some readers. What follows is a selection of best books read in 2012 and a couple from years prior.</em></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Canada</strong> by Richard Ford</p> <p> The bravura opening of Richard Ford’s new novel suggests a story heavy on plot (“First I'll tell about the bank robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.”). There <em>will</em> be a bank robbery and murder, but the story of 15-year-old Dell Parsons and his troubled family, as told by Dell at an older age, encompasses far more than these sensational elements.  <em>Canada</em> is a deeply ruminative work, written in spare, evocative language. It is, above all, <a href="http://highbrowmagazine.com/1255-crime-punishment-and-exile-richard-fords-canada">a novel about voice</a>.</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumRichardFordBook_0.jpg" style="width: 397px; height: 600px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Capital</strong> by John Lanchester</p> <p> In late 2007, a series of baffling and vaguely sinister postcards arrive at the homes of residents of Pepys Road in South London. Each card carries a single message: WE WANT WHAT YOU HAVE. Over the course of the novel, we learn more about the perpetrators behind the mysterious (and increasingly violent) campaign, but the true focus of <em>Capital</em> stays squarely on the Pepys Road residents as they rush to comfort, confront or hurt each other. Lanchester is <a href="http://highbrowmagazine.com/1424-john-lanchester-explores-money-character-and-destiny-capital">a master of tone</a>, crafting the perspective of a sardonic, yet genuinely curious narrator standing just off-screen while these Londoners (and others) fall prey to their social and self-induced disasters.</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumcapitalbook_0.jpg" style="width: 362px; height: 534px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Lionel Asbo: State of England </strong>by Martin Amis</p> <p> Each new book by Martin Amis seems to trigger a media frenzy involving sensational details from his past. By now (<em>Lionel Asbo</em> is his 13th novel), this frenzy serves not to enlighten but to distract from the work itself. In that respect, Amis remains one of the most consistently interesting and—on a purely sentence-by-sentence level—one of the <a href="http://highbrowmagazine.com/1569-martin-amis-amongst-thugs-world-lionel-asbo">best writers</a> around. Language is his true dominion, a manic, bubbling and light-footed style that depends as much on the reader’s ability to keep up as on its own hard-earned effects. Readers turned off by prose that calls attention to itself should choose another book off the shelf. For the rest of us, Martin Amis remains an international treasure.</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2mediummartinamis%20%28barnes%20and%20noble%29.jpg" style="width: 338px; height: 502px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>NW </strong>by Zadie Smith</p> <p> Throughout this energetic new novel, Zadie Smith demonstrates a deep understanding of the complex ebb and flow of human relationships—between mothers and daughters, between best friends, between a reformed addict determined to stay clean and his flamboyant, drug-using ex-girlfriend. The reader becomes so absorbed in these characters’ lives that, even forewarned of an impending tragedy, calamity comes as a breathtaking surprise and with a penetrating sense of loss. The stories Smith tells, and the language she employs, are by turns surprising, nimble, effortless and wise. <em>NW</em> is a book that, like the part of London it describes, <a href="http://highbrowmagazine.com/1752-zadie-smith-lays-claim-patch-london-nw">lives and breathes from one page to the next</a>. It is the work of a master.</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumzadiesmith_0.jpg" style="width: 397px; height: 600px;" /></p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Honorable Mentions</strong></p> <p> <strong>C </strong>by Tom McCarthy (2010)</p> <p> Tom McCarthy’s remarkable and beautifully written novel, <em>C</em>, traces the life and times of Serge Carrefax, from his childhood in the English countryside through young adulthood in a Central European spa to battle in the skies of World War I and finally the tombs of Egypt. While the protagonist of this picaresque tale never becomes fully known to the reader, there’s a limpid immediacy to McCarthy’s writing that’s irresistible, as when young Serge accidentally tumbles into a stream:</p> <p> “And then he’s in, tumbling and turning like the blocks as water rushes up his nose and burns his throat. His hands push muddy slime and he bobs up again, his face back in the air, his legs beneath him … Beneath the surface of the stream, he opens his eyes. The water is bright and murky at the same time, like honey. Snake-like fronds wave and dance in its lit-up darkness; particles of mud hang between these, stirred up into canopies of blossom. The water’s right inside him; it’s not nasty anymore, just cold. And he’s no longer sinking: if anything, he’s been lifted up, by strong arms coiled around him, hugging him …”</p> <p>  </p> <p>  <strong>Hawthorn &amp; Child </strong>by Keith Ridgway (2012)</p> <p> An excerpt from <em>Hawthorn &amp; Child </em>entitled “Goo Book” appeared late last year in the <em>New Yorker. </em>It told the story of a pickpocket who moonlights as a chauffeur for a London crime boss. As short fiction goes, it’s something of a compressed masterpiece. The novel itself takes on a much broader dimension, careening from the meditations of the title characters (a pair of hard-bitten detectives) to accounts of sordid “deviant” sex, the follies of youth and the mysteries of love and sadness. Take, for example, the opening lines:</p> <p> “He dreamed he was sleeping, and Child was driving. Driving but not moving. He was sleeping on the passenger seat and Child wrestled with the wheel, but the car was still. It was the city that was moving. It was dark. The city rushed past them like words on a screen, and he would have read them but they went too fast. He was filled with sorrow. It trickled through him and filled his eyes. He wept and he didn’t know why, and he was embarrassed by it but he could not stop. He cried so much that his face disappeared. He dreamed that the siren was on, and it was so loud that it woke him.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Hemingway’s Boat </strong>by Paul Hendrickson (2011)</p> <p> The reputation of the 20<sup>th</sup> century master of stripped-down prose has taken a beating in the decades since his death by suicide. This hasn’t stopped a tsunami of biographical and critical examinations of Hemingway’s work, nor the publication of posthumous novels he probably never intended to see the light of day. Paul Hendrickson has taken a more roundabout approach to looking at the writer and his life—through a rambling account of Hemingway and the life he spent aboard <em>Pilar</em>, the 38-foot cabin cruiser he used for fishing, writing, hunting German U-boats in the Gulf of Mexico and all the rest. An intriguing approach, to be sure, but what truly distinguishes <em>Hemingway’s Boat </em>is Hendrickson’s exquisite, crystalline prose. The precise details and clarity of his sentences invite the reader to happily explore any number of arcane subjects:</p> <p> “And now Hemingway’s boat sat beached and grime-coated and time-stunned in the Cuban sun. There were rips in her canvas topside; little hair-like pieces of fabric stuck up from the roof. Her brass and copper fastenings had gone green with corrosion, her bottom a hideous pink. Someone had reconfigured her power plant: instead of two propellers, there was just the big one, coming down the center of the boat … here she was, intact, beneath this awning, on this hill, sliced with midday heat and shadow.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p>  Highbrow Magazine <em>chief book critic Lee Polevoi is completing a new novel, </em>The Confessions of Gabriel Ash.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/lionel-asbo" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lionel Asbo</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/martin-amis" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Martin Amis</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/nw" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">nw</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/zadie-smith" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">zadie smith</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/capital" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Capital</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/john-lanchester" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Lanchester</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/hemingways-boat" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hemingway&#039;s Boat</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/hawthorn-and-child" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hawthorn and child</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lee Polevoi</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Knopf</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 27 Dec 2012 18:18:58 +0000 tara 2099 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1889-best-books-and-honorable-mentions#comments Martin Amis Amongst the Thugs: The World of ‘Lionel Asbo’ https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1569-martin-amis-amongst-thugs-world-lionel-asbo <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 09/19/2012 - 15:59</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2mediummartinamis%20%28barnes%20and%20noble%29.jpg?itok=B9KT7hAN"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2mediummartinamis%20%28barnes%20and%20noble%29.jpg?itok=B9KT7hAN" width="323" height="480" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> <strong>Lionel Asbo: State of England</strong></p> <p> <strong>By Martin Amis</strong></p> <p> <strong>Knopf, 255 pages</strong></p> <p>  </p> <p>  </p> <p> What living novelist brings more baggage to the publication of a new book than Martin Amis? Each occasion triggers a recounting of wildly irrelevant details from his past (no need to repeat them here), generating a media frenzy to which Amis often contributes with outspoken views on culture, politics and history. By now (<em>Lionel Asbo </em>is his 13<sup>th</sup> novel), this frenzy serves not to enlighten but to distract from the work itself. In that respect, Amis remains one of the most consistently interesting and—on a purely sentence-by-sentence level—<a href="http://knopf.knopfdoubleday.com/2012/08/31/audio-martin-amis-reads-from-lionel-asbo/">one of the best writers we have.</a></p> <p>  </p> <p> The plot, such as it is, revolves around the relationship between the title character (a London street thug who’s changed his last name to an acronym for Anti-Social Behavior Order) and his mixed-race nephew Des Pepperdine. Des and Lionel reside in a council flat in the fictional neighborhood of Diston, “with its burping, magmatic canal, its fizzy low-rise pylons, its buzzing waste.” Lionel’s money-making endeavors are strictly criminal, while his teenage nephew aims for a more conventional station in life. The problem is, as the novel opens, he’s having an affair with his 39-year-old grandmother—a secret that must be kept from “Uncle Li,” since the consequences of discovery are beyond imagining.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Lionel’s life is transformed upon winning £140 million ($220 million) and becoming, in the British press, the “Lottery Lout.” This king’s ransom makes possible the purchase of a manor house and a small army of public relations advisers and security agents. Yet for the eternally dissatisfied and pathologically self-absorbed Lionel Asbo, somehow it’s not enough:</p> <p>  </p> <p> “All the same he felt light, light, insubstantial, hardly there. Every time he went to the casino and the lift came to a halt on the penthouse floor, Lionel expected to keep on surging upward, past the helipad and the Century City Eyrie and out into the summer blue … The weightless world, the light limbo, of the South Central, where nothing weighed, nothing counted, and everything was allowed.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Lionel’s new wealth will enable him to exact a terrifying revenge on his nephew for his incestuous behavior many years ago.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediummartinamis%20%28Knopf%29.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 374px; " /></p> <p>  </p> <p> But plot isn’t the reason to read Martin Amis. Language is his true dominion, a manic, bubbling and light-footed style that depends as much on the reader’s ability to keep up as on its own hard-earned effects. From <em>Money </em>and <em>The Information </em>to the unjustly maligned <em>Yellow Dog, </em>his prose remains concise, lyrical and over-reaching, all at once. Take, for example, this description of just one part of Lionel’s immense baronial estate:</p> <p> “The village nestled on a rise over a shallow valley, and Lionel’s vast garden was arranged on three levels, three graded distances, eventually subsiding into a pasture of paler green where two tiny horses nuzzled and browsed. The uppermost lawn was tyrannized by a sky-filling cedar, caught in mid-flail, ancient, grand, and haggard, and half-supported, now, by tripods made from its own wood. Dropped branches, fashioned into crutches.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> As everywhere in Amis’s work, some of the linguistic special effects resonate and some don’t. Dogs are “missiles of muscle” and a restaurant owner has “an icecap of thick white hair.” On the other hand, a high-rise “loomed like a whimsical robot over the stubby bohemia of north Pimlico.” Surrendering to the pleasure of his prose means abandoning orthodox notions of the “proper” use of metaphor and simile.</p> <p>  </p> <p> There are pleasures as well in Lionel Asbo’s voice. By and large, American readers won’t know if the speech patterns are authentically idiomatic, but that’s beside the point. There’s a delightful poetry to his unfettered, consistently vulgar manner of speaking—as when he waxes nostalgic about taking in his orphaned nephew: “Gaa, the state you were in when I come to you rescue. Crying youself to sleep at night. You was … you were always brushing up against me for a hug, like a cat. And I’d say, <em>Get off, you little fairy. Get off, you little poof. </em>I’d say, <em>If you want to ponce a cuddle you can go round you gran’s. </em>But now you doing all right.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Or when expostulating about the mysteries of the female of the species:</p> <p>  </p> <p> “Sunday morning. I’m lying there Sunday morning. I’d just had this dream about Gina Drago. And she was all dark and uh, <em>glowing</em>. Beautiful. Then I open my eyes and what do I see?  Cynthia. Like a dairy product. Like a f***ing yoghurt. And she says, <em>What’s the matter with you? You had a nightmare? </em>And I say, <em>No, love. It’s just me guts acting up. </em>Because they all got feelings, haven’t they, Des. All got feelings. God bless them.”</p> <p>  </p> <p> The universe of <em>Lionel Asbo </em>bears a passing resemblance to the one we inhabit, but life moves at a faster clip and violence of all kinds (though particularly towards angelic infants) is always possible. Readers turned off by prose that calls attention to itself should choose another book off the shelf. For the rest of us, Martin Amis is an international treasure.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> <em>Lee Polevoi, </em>Highbrow Magazine's <em>chief book critic, is the author of a novel, </em>The Moon in Deep Winter.</p> <p>  </p> <p> <em><strong>Photos: Courtesy of Knopf and Barnes and Noble.</strong></em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/martin-amis" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Martin Amis</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/lionel-asbo" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lionel Asbo</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">books</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">literature</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/british-authors" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">British authors</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lee Polevoi</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 19 Sep 2012 19:59:22 +0000 tara 1583 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/1569-martin-amis-amongst-thugs-world-lionel-asbo#comments