From: stephenjones
Category: Amis
Date: 7/20/99
Time: 6:15:18 AM
Remote Name: 130.159.248.35
Regarding The mystery child, named Luke by the Telegraph, it appears, from the article quoted below (also from The Telegraph) that Luke is actually a girl, named Fonsesca and not unfortunatley Leia!!
From Telegraph weds 14 july 1999
Why Daughters are all the Rage by Allison Pearson
... A couple of years back, I interviewed Martin Amis, shortly after he had become the father of a baby girl. With two sons from his first marriage, the novelist was well placed to marvel at the difference a daughter made: "Fernanda's hardly a strain at all. She hasn't got a complaining mode in her repertoire, so it's felt very unlike the boys who were, well, boys. They fought you every inch of the way."
Always a distressingly clear-eyed observer of the difference between the sexes, Amis said: "Men spend their whole lives training themselves to occupy a tiny emotional repertoire. They aren't like women; they can't have refreshing little weeps. The whole edifice is likely to crumble if you do.
"You notice this gender difference when you're raising children, because very soon, with a boy, you start calling them 'mate' or a laddish kind of thing develops and you stop kissing them quite so much. Because you're thinking, at some level, 'This is all very well, this hugging and kissing, but out there is a tough world'.
"It's a primitive thing. With a girl, you don't feel any of that. You back off a little bit with the boys, and I don't see any reason at all to back off from Fernanda." ...