From: stephenjones
Category: Amis
Date: 7/22/99
Time: 5:58:13 AM
Remote Name: 130.159.248.35
Found this in "Etext Archives", it's from an arts n farts newsletter type thing and it's not very good but it made me laugh quite loud, even now the bun haired women in the corner is firing deep-frozen glances at me from behind her vdu. Oh it was written by some one called Chris Porter who I hope doesn't "just get old".
The Low-Life Boswell
Martin Amis' London Fields follows the fortunes of some London characters set in the near future. The narrator is an author who decides to write a novel about the goings-on of several local characters, and he finds ways to insinuate himself into their lives in order to know what's going on more completely. Keith Talent is the local pub's big man, a ne'er-do-well who longs to strike it big in darts; Guy Clinch is the well-to-do idle crony ridiculously easy to fool; Nicola Six is the femme fatale playing the one off the other in order to fulfill her own plans -- she wants one of them to murder her. I really enjoyed this story at the beginning, and I read over two hundred pages of it, but it really bogged me down. The daily lives of these characters, even given the novelty of the plot, just gets too boring when Nicola Six is in the middle of her scheming, making sure Guy falls hopelessly in love with her by playing the inexperienced virgin who wants a baby, while humoring Keith with the promise of some out-of-this-world sex. So little happens and their lives don't interest me, finally; it just gets old.