From: Brooklyn
Category: Amis
Date: 8/18/99
Time: 12:10:20 PM
Remote Name: 207.238.28.10
I don't have any beef with Nicola. She's no more a caricature than Keith or Guy, just a less funny one. And I guess a less consistent one as she's an "actress" as opposed to the guys who are authentic fools. Amis also covers his ass towards the end, when Samson arrives home to find Nicola in his/MA's apartment. Having read Samson's manuscript she chastises him for the way he depicted her. I think she might even say something about being an unbelievable caricature. During the darts final she's at her most extreme, but since it's her coming out party for Guy I can buy into it. She has no pity for these guys, seeing she's about to be offed herself, what's some hard-core humiliation for Guy? If the novel is about the death of love then Nicola has a major dose of self loathing to complement her spite of everything else. So whether she's a symbolic black hole, a caricature, or whatever, it doesn't matter. It wouldn't be the same book if she was warm and fuzzy. Or even is she wavered on her path. It says at the beginning that the end has already been decided.
As for whether Amis is writing from his POV instead of Nicola's, well, that's real shaky ground there. I mean where does that kind of analysis start and end? As for the Nicola not being convincing; If she's not convincing then neither is the book. The novel is so tightly constructed that to diss one of the main characters is to diss the book. I mean, we all know this kind of shit doesn't go down in real life - don't we? Somebody isn't in the right place at the right time & the whole thing gets thrown off. But in *London Fields* it's all over before it starts, so there's no turning back. It has to be the way it is.
I put down my shovel for now.