Product Description

The narrator, Samson Young, enters the Black Cross, a thoroughly undesirable public house, and finds the main players of his drama assembled, just waiting to begin. It's a gift of a story from real life...all Samson has to do is to write it as it happens. Taking a small pocket of time and a richly diverse part of London, Martin Amis dissects the nature of a society as it hurtles towards the millennium.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69831 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 470 pages

Review
Into squalid London, on the brink of the millennium, flies American writer Samson Young, who sees a murder story and its characters right under his nose. Complex, powerful and grotesquely comic. (Kirkus UK)

The bright, no longer so young, hope of English fiction doesn't exactly bomb on this outing - it's more a crash landing (at 480 pp.) into the "big" issues of our day: sadomasochism, environmental destruction, random violence, threats of nuclear war. The book is set in 1999 (it's billed as a "murder story for the end of the millennium") and is centered upon the dark, unwholesome beauty Nicola Six, who is gifted with a foreknowledge of events, including her own murder, which is scheduled to take place on her 33rd birthday. Nicola is responsible for her own brutal death as only a victim can be in Amis' epistemology: even though the murderer has not yet murdered, Nicola "was already a murderee." Not that she has our sympathy: Nicola is like a spider sitting in the middle of her web, conducting a long, maddening tease - even though she still doesn't know who will do the murder, the pages here are spent filling out, in dense and sordid detail, clues and counterclues. The two suspected men symbolize dual sides of English life: Keith, a petty criminal whose mind is filled with tabloid sex and violence ("Keith didn't look like a murderer. He looked like a murderer's dog"), and Guy Clinch ("A good guy or at least a nice one"). Their tangos with Nicola are filtered through the lens of an American hack-journalist, Samson Young, who is suffering from writer's block (so that Nicola, as she full well knows, is a gift from the gods, as she theatrically dumps her diaries into the dustbin opposite his window) and dying of a mysterious disease. Young will be the fall guy in a plot of patent coincidence, all ironically underlined by the narrator. As if to lift the moral tone of the novel ("Crawling through the iodized shithouse that used to be England . . ."), or to act as substitute for a reader's emotional involvement, nuclear war is used as filler, apocalypse as local color. Chill cynicisms from Amis in his longer form - for those who care to follow. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
The narrator, Samson Young, enters the Black Cross, a thoroughly undesirable public house, and finds the main players of his drama assembled, just waiting to begin. It's a gift of a story from real life...all Samson has to do is to write it as it happens. Taking a small pocket of time and a richly diverse part of London, Martin Amis dissects the nature of a society as it hurtles towards the millennium.

About the Author
Martin Amis is the author of nine novels, two collections of stories and five collections of non-fiction. His memoir, Experience, was published by Vintage in 2001.

Customer Reviews

Witty, brilliant sadistic tease of a novel
"London Fields" is a multi-layered, black, witty literary tour de force. A squad of characters, with the main roles ranging from Samson Young (the writer), Guy Clinch (the good, rich guy), Keith Talent (the criminal, pornography and masturbation addict, wanna-be-dart pro), Marmaduke (Guy's mighty and gruelly mean child- who serves for a big part of the best laughs here), Nicola Six (the murderee, who teases and manipulates all men in rather specific and imaginative ways) and the "absent" Mark Asprey (the writer, in whose appartment Sam is now living and writing- with the initials M.A., an alter ego of Martin Amis?). There are Guy's and Keith's wives, Guy's wife's sister Lizziboo (who rather falls for Sam) and the South African Nr. 7 tennis pro, who is, or is he not, Guy's wife's lover.
Nicola Six believes she will be murdered, by Guy or Keith, and narrates her story to Sam, who is using this "real" story to get over his writing blockade. Martin Amis does not seem to pity his characters, I would even say he sadistically spotlights their diverse flaws of character (which is rather zynical at times...). As Nicola teases the men in this setting, Martin Amis teases the reader all the way through and manages to bend the ending in an unexpected, surprising but completely devastatingly convincing way. Quite breathtaking is the moment, when you become aware of having had the clues (and most answers) hidden in front of your eyes right from the very beginning. Wonderful sharp writing, a plot where you never really know which way Martin Amis will go next, a riddle, a crime story, a love story, a novel, which is by all means, to use the words of Martin Amis, just "damned bloody good".

Superb
Other reviews have given synopses, so I'll skip that...

Firstly, this book is worth reading if you live in London - Amis captures perfectly the bizarre juxtaposition of sleaze against wealth that is everywhere in the city, and the book is wonderfully atmospheric of both of these aspects of London and more.

The wider appeal of the book is surely Amis' writing rather than the plot itself; his astounding use and manipulation of the English language makes 'London Fields' a real tour de force.

Most of all though, the general obvservations of peoples' behaviours, psychologies (particularly with regard to sex), reactions to one another, and the varying viewpoints on life offered here are captivating and, I would say, remove the need for a gripping, suspenseful story; these observations are also often made in an extremely witty way.

However, I also disagree with other reviewers, who claim that "nothing happens" in 'London Fields': this is a highly misleading thing to say about this book - there are several narrative strains which meet excitingly at the end of the novel and I personally found that despite Amis' determination to make the book more about the 'journey to the climax' than the ending itself, there is real tension. I do agree, though, that the plot might not be the main focus of the book.

All in all, I would recommend this book to almost anyone who feels that they might want to read something which is something other than (or more than) just a story and experience the writing of someone with a trully masterful command of the English language.

Darts rocks
This book is truly brilliant. Admittedly not much happens, but the characters (Keith Talent in particular) are so superbly evoked that you just can't help enjoying it. Amis is the great British talent of the late 20th century and writes with a passion and fury far beyond McEwan or Barnes. Everything in life is here. I put it down and started re-reading it the next day - first time I'd done that since A-level English in the 80s. Wonderful!