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Blake Morrison on Yellow Dog
HEADLINE: A little night reading
BYLINE: Blake Morrison
SOURCE: The London Times
DATE: 20 July 2003
Maybe it's because my parents were doctors, but the two books I've most enjoyed recently have been about illness---Hilary Mantel's GIVING UP THE GHOST, which includes an account of her long-undiagnosed endometriosis, and Sheila Hale's THE MAN WHO LOST HIS LANGUAGE, which movingly describes her historian-husband's stroke and her struggles with a health system all too ready to write him off. There's more illness but also much hilarity in the diaries of playwright Simon Gray (extracted in the lastest GRANTA) as he struggles with age, amnesia, cigarette addiction and the downsides of a luxury hotel. I've just started on the proofs of Martin Amis's new novel THE YELLOW DOG [sic], due in September. The opening pages brilliantly capture what he called "the obscenification of everyday life"---from the names of cocktails and fashion companies, through intimate mobile phone conversations loudly conducted in front of strangers, to the bodies of teenage girls festooned with metal ("her car keys in one cheek and her door keys in the other").
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