2008 books

[peteryoung]

55) Martin Amis, Heavy Water, 1998
A diverse collection, one that covers many of the bases of what I like to see in short fiction. A couple of stories are direct inversions of reality: 'Career Move' has hack screenwriters living in poverty while poets are flown First Class to LA, and in 'Straight Fiction' everyone is gay, apart from a beleaguered straight minority. The best stories are the longer ones: 'The Janitor on Mars' riffs refreshingly on the extraterrestrial/technofetish obsessions of hard SF and is a gem of a story, while 'The Coincidence of the Arts' and 'State of England' are deadpan funny and wryly observant of the fading British preoccupations with race and class. In stories such as these you can see how Amis often starts with an almost deliberate sketchiness and then paces his story with impatient prose, excellent dialogue and sharp interplay between characters, and two shorter stories from the 1970s also illustrate how his style has become far more self-assured over twenty years. There's good variety here, and quality in spades.

Comments

[grytpype-thynne.livejournal.com]

He is good, isn't he?

I revisit SUCCESS every few years, in particular.

Someone may add that the man is a git, as is usual, as if this somehow invalidates ability.