Hundreds of reviews of Amis's novels are available on the web.
The lists that follow are not intended to be complete; instead, they seek to preserve some of the more illuminating assessments.
Users are also strongly advised to register with The New York Times, as many of those links will not otherwise work.
Jump to:
The Rachel Papers (1973) | Dead Babies (1975) | Success (1978) | Other People (1981) Money: A Suicide Note (1984) | The Moronic Inferno (1986) | Einstein's Monsters (1987)
London Fields (1989) | Time's Arrow (1991) | Visiting Mrs Nabokov (1993)
The Information (1995) | Night Train (1997) | Heavy Water (1998) | Experience (2000)
The War Against Cliche (2001) | Koba the Dread (2002) | Yellow Dog (2003)
House of Meetings (2006) | The Second Plane (2008) | The Pregnant Widow (2010) | Lionel Asbo (2012)
Reviews of Lionel Asbo
Advance publication publicity (Jan. 2011-April 2012):
"Mr Amis's Planet."
Morton Hoi Jensen. Los Angeles Review of Books, 25 April 2012. LINK | PDF
"Amis says au revoir to all that," the Independent, 9 January 2011. LINK | PDF
Reviews of Philip Larkin, Poems, Selected by Martin Amis
Untitled Review by Patrick Mayer, Varsity, 7 October 2011. LINK | PDF
Untitled Review by Sean O'Brien, Guardian, 16 September 2011. LINK | PDF
Reviews of The Pregnant Widow
"Martin Amis, Funny Man" LINK | PDF
John G. Rodwan Jr. reviews the reviews for Open Letters Monthly. July 2010.
"More Lad Than Bad" LINK | PDF
Edmund White, NY Review of Books, 24 June 2010.
"That Summer in Italy" LINK | PDF
Graydon Carter, New York Times, 21 May 2010.
Untitled review by Jacob Molyneux, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 May 2010. LINK | PDF
"Open Book, by Philip Marchand" LINK | PDF
National Post (Canada), 15 May 2010.
Untitled review by Ron Charles, Washington Post, 12 May 2010. LINK | PDF
"The Sexual Revolution Dissected" LINK | PDF
Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, 10 May 2010. Although predictably negative about Amis's work, this review was so condemnatory that it was itself the subject of coverage in the Guardian. LINK | PDF
Untitled review by Boyd Tonkin, Independent, 12 February 2010. LINK | PDF
"It happened one summer" LINK | PDF
Richard Bradford for the Spectator, 6 February 2010. Bradford was set to release a biography of Amis in October. For various reasons, perhaps including this review, Amis and his agent blocked the publication of that book. LINK | PDF
"Amis aims high ... and misses" LINK | PDF
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times, 6 Feb. 2010.
Untitled review by Harry Mount, Telegraph, 7 February 2010. LINK | PDF
Untitled review by Aravind Adiga, Sunday Times, 6 February 2010. LINK | PDF
Untitled review by Christopher Taylor, Guardian, 6 February 2010. LINK | PDF
Untitled review by Philip Hensher, Telegraph, 5 February 2010. LINK | PDF
See also Hensher's article "Martin Amis: A Chronicle of Damage" in anticipation of his interview with Amis at the Ways with Words festival, 20 May 2010. LINK | PDF
Untitled review by Roger Lewis, Daily Express, 5 February 2010. LINK | PDF
Video Review by Lorna Bradbury LINK | MP4 (34 MB)
For the Culture Minute segment, Telegraph, 5 Feb. 2010.
"Martin Amis's Chronicle of Loss" LINK | PDF
Bharat Tandon in the Times Literary Supplement, 3 February 2010.
Untitled review by Tim Adams, Observer, 31 January 2010. LINK | PDF
Untitled review by Peter Kemp, Sunday Times, 31 January 2010. LINK | PDF
Untitled review by Leo Robson, New Statesman, 28 January 2010. LINK | PDF
Advance publication publicity (Jan. 2009-Feb 2010):
Tamasin Day-Lewis as Scheherazade, Telegraph, 17 February 2010. LINK | PDF
On Sexual Revolution and Fatherhood, 3 February 2010. LINK | PDF
"Martin Amis and the Sex War," Sunday Times, 24 January 2010. LINK | PDFs 1 2 3 4
On Former Lovers as Inspirations for the novel, Telegraph, 22 January 2010. LINK | PDF
On Amis and McEwan's Reputations, Telegraph, 22 January 2010. LINK | PDF
On Amis Coming of Age, Guardian, 10 January 2010. LINK | PDF
On Sexual Revolution & Sally Amis, Independent, 6 Dec. 2009. LINK | PDF
On Feminism & Sally Amis, all 20 Nov. 2009. LINK1 | PDF | LINK2 | PDF | LINK3 | PDF
Amis at the Richmond Book Now Festival, 10 November 2009. LINK | PDF
Jordan is just 'two bags of silicone,' Telegraph, 27 October 2009. LINK | PDF
Amis at the Writers' Centre, Norwich, 11 May 2009. LINK | PDF
"Martin Amis Lays Bare a Sexual Trauma," Sunday Times, 10 May 2009. LINK | PDF
"The Return of the Master," Prospect Magazine, May 2009. LINK | PDF
"Amis ruffles feathers of his women," Daily Mail, January 2009. LINK | WORD
Reviews of The Second Plane
Patrick Smith for Salon.com, 14 November 2008.
Alan Jacobs in First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life, June/July 2008.
"Peer Review: Is Martin Amis Serious?" LINK | PDF
Analysis and summary of major reviews John G. Rodwan Jr., for Open Letters Monthly, June 2008.
"The Catastrophist" LINK | PDF
Leon Wieseltier in the New York Times, 27 April 2008.
"Novelist's Crash Course on Terror" LINK | PDF
Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, 8 April 2008.
"Terror and Loathing" LINK | PDF
Laura Miller for Salon.com, 2 April 2008.
"The Writing Man's Burden" LINK | PDF
Adam Kirsch in the New York Sun, 26 March 2008.
Richard King in the Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 2008.
"Amis and Islam" [essay] LINK | PDF
Rachel Donadio in the New York Times, 9 March 2008.
"Martin Amis and the boredom of terror" LINK | PDF
Marjorie Perloff in the Times Literary Supplement, 13 February 2008.
"A Crisis of Testosterone" LINK | PDF
Lionel Barber in the Financial Times, 8 February 2008.
"Amis, Islam, and the Writer's Duty" LINK | PDF
Andrew Anthony in The First Post, 7 February 2008.
Sarfraz Manzoor, 3 February 2008.
"Review: The Second Plane by Martin Amis" LINK | PDF
Sameer Rahim in The Telegraph, 2 February 2008.
"Down with mobocracy and misology" LINK | PDF
Cal McCrystal, The Independent on Sunday, 27 January 2008.
"The Second Plane by Martin Amis" LINK | PDF
William Dalrymple, The Sunday Times, 27 January 2008.
"Beware the nut-rissole artists" LINK | PDF
Christopher Taylor, The Guardian, 26 January 2008.
"Martin Amis Slams Islam, Mocks Bin Laden, Scorns Appeasers" LINK | PDF
George Walden, Bloomberg.com, 24 January 2008.
"Martin Amis just can't get past 9/11" LINK | PDF
Jenny McCartney in The Telegraph, 22 January 2008.
"Defender, though not of the faith" LINK | PDF
Philip Hensher, The Spectator, 16 January 2008.
"Amis's War on Terror by Other Means" LINK | PDF
Tim Adams, The Observer, 13 January 2008.
"The Second Plane by Martin Amis" LINK | PDF
David Aaronovitch, The Times, 11 January 2008.
Reviews of House of Meetings
"Executioner Songs" LINK | PDF
John Banville in the New York Review of Books, 1 March 2007.
"Martin Amis and the Women" LINK | PDF
Ellen Kanner in Pages magazine, January/February 2007.
"The Amis Papers: Where is Martin Amis Headed Next" LINK | PDF
Keith Gessen for Slate.com, 6 February 2007.
Andre Mayer for CBC (Canada), 31 January 2007.
"Amiserable: Come on, Martin Amis, You Can Do Worse Than This" LINK | PDF
Sam Anderson in New York magazine, 22 January 2007.
"Martin Amis's Gulag: Accurate, Harrowing, Not Quite Plausible" LINK | PDF
Adam Begley in the New York Observer, 15 January 2007.
"Prisoners: Russian Terrors Old and New" LINK | PDF
Joan Acecella in the New Yorker, 15 January 2007.
Liesl Schillinger in the New York Times, 14 January 2007.
"Male rage, erotic violence, and infidelity in the Gulag" LINK | PDF
James Marcus in the Los Angeles Times, 14 January 2007.
"The Crown and the Crowd" LINK | WORD
A Profile by Carl Shuker in Poets and Writers magazine, January/February 2007.
"Love, Bludgeoned and Bent by the Camps" LINK | PDF
Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, 9 January 2007.
"Bile, Blood, Bilge, Mulch" LINK | PDF
Daniel Soar in the London Review of Books, 4 January 2007.
"The Amis Archipelago" LINK | PDF
Adam Kirsch in the New York Sun, 3 January 2007.
"Confronting Death in an Age of 'Horrorism'" WORD
Matt Thorne in The Catholic Herald, 1 December 2006.
"Reports from the Gulag" LINK | PDF
Tom Chatfield in Prospect Magazine, November 2006.
"Dead Souls? Martin Amis is After Bigger Shikar,..." LINK | PDF
Steve Finbow for Stop Smiling Magazine, 26 October 2006.
"Into the head of a terrorist" LINK | PDF
James Button on "The Last Days of Muhammad Atta." In the Sydney Morning Herald, 9 October 2006.
"From Russia with Loathing" LINK | PDF
Catherine Merridale for the Independent, 6 October 2006.
"In trying to be too clever, Martin Amis dilutes the horror of Stalin's camps"
Anthony Macris in the Sydney Morning Herald, 2 October 2006. Mixed. LINK | PDF
Stephanie Merritt in The New Statesman, 2 October 2006.
John Lewis in Time Out magazine, 2 October 2006.
"It is time Martin Amis wrote a bona fide novel again?" WORD
Tibor Fischer in The Sunday Telegraph, 1 October 2006.
"Bloodlust Lays Down Like ... Wine" LINK | PDF
Tim Martin for the Independent, 1 October 2006.
"Out of the Darkness" LINK | PDF
Robert Macfarlane in The Sunday Times, 1 October 2006.
"Lessons from the Gulag" LINK | PDF
Toby Lichtig in the Observer, 1 October 2006.
"His Master's Voice Still Talking Dirty" LINK | PDF
Peter Burnett in Scotland on Sunday, 1 October 2006.
"Past troubles bleed into present horrors" LINK | PDF
Douglas Kennedy in The Times, 30 September 2006.
M. John Harrison in The Guardian, 30 September 2006.
"Breath Was Just Another Weapon" LINK | PDF
Bharat Tandon in the Times Literary Supplement, 27 September 2006.
"Forever and a Day: Martin Amis's Sept. 11" LINK | PDF
James Parker for the Boston Globe, 7 May 2006.
"Amis flies into fresh controversy with story of 9/11 hijacker" LINK | PDF
Louise Jury reviews "The Last Days of Muhammad Atta" -- once intended to be included in House of Meetings -- in The Independent, 14 April 2006.
Reviews of Yellow Dog
"The Many Faces of Martin Amis" LINK | PDF
Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian, 29 May 2004: "Yellow Dog offers differing faces to the world, depending largely on how one is feeling at the time. Or how one is feeling about Martin Amis at the time"
"Someone Needs to Have a Word with Amis" LINK | PDF | WORD
Tibor Fischer in The Daily Telegraph, 4 August 2003. The most notorious panning.
"Dickens with a Snarl" LINK | PDF
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in the Observer, 24 August 2003.
"Surrounded by Broken Myths" WORD
Lewis Jones in The Daily Telegraph, 30 August 2003.
"Fear and Loathing" WORD
Jane Shilling in the Sunday Telegraph, 31 August 2003.
"Let Me Introduce You to the Void" WORD
Matt Thorne in the Independent on Sunday, 31 August 2003.
"A Burnt-Out Case" WORD
Peter Kemp in the Sunday Times, 31 August 2003.
"Martin Amis versus the Modern World" WORD
Robert MacFarlane in the Evening Standard, 1 September 2003 (excerpt).
"Tiring Old Tricks" WORD
Erica Wagner in the Times, 3 September 2003.
"Leader of the Pack" WORD
Alan Hollinghurst in the Guardian, 6 September 2003.
"GR8 Expectations" WORD
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the Financial Times, 6 September 2003.
"Something Very Amis" WORD
Alan Taylor in the Sunday Herald (Scotland), 7 September 2003 (excerpt).
"Martin Bites Back" WORD
Donald Morrison for TIME Europe, 8 September 2003, Vol. 162 No. 9 (excerpt)
"Back to Blighty" WORD
George Walden in the New Statesman, 8 September 2003.
"Women May Be From Venus, but Men Are From Hunger" LINK | PDF
Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, 28 October 2003. Opening sentence: "Martin Amis's new novel reads like a sendup of a Martin Amis novel written by someone intent on sabotaging his reputation."
"Reverse Engineering" LINK | PDF
Walter Kirn in the New York Times Book Review, 9 November 2003.
"XXX: Martin Amis wonders if pornography is ruining your life" LINK | PDF
Christopher Caldwell for Slate, November 2003.
"Muddled Brilliance" LINK | PDF1 | PDF2
Samuel Carlisle for Meaningful Audacity, 1 December 2003.
"Booker Barking" WORD
An assemblage of excerpts on Yellow Dog and the Man Booker Prize competition.
Reviews of Koba the Dread
"Recounting the Suffering of Russia Under Stalin" LINK | PDF
Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, 26 June 2002. Excerpt: "Koba the Dread, the title of Martin Amis's latest book, refers to Joseph Stalin; 'the Twenty Million,' to that monster's many victims, who perished in his purges, in his gulag, in famines and in his campaign of forced collectivization. The 'Laughter' Mr. Amis refers to is a literary construct — dealing with the absurdities perpetrated by Stalin, and the need to forget those surreal horrors — and therein lie many of the problems of this self-conscious and sometimes self-indulgent volume."
Christopher Hitchens replies to Amis's "Letter to a Friend" in Koba the Dread.
"Dreaded Questions" LINK | PDF
Kenneth Baker in the San Francisco Chronicle, 14 July 2002.
Charles Taylor for Salon.com (16 July 2002). LINK | PDF1 | PDF2 | PDF3
Gary Shteyngart in The Washington Post, 21 July 2002.
"A Shocking Lack of Decorum" LINK | PDF
Orlando Figes for The Daily Telegraph, 1 September 2002: 11.
"The Need for Memory" LINK | PDF
Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian, 5 September 2002.
"A little right belief" LINK | PDF
Aidan Smith in The Scotsman, 6 September 2002.
"The black farce of history" LINK | PDF
Neal Ascherson in the Observer, 7 September 2002: 10.
"His dethronement is now time-urgent" WORD | PDF
Johann Hari in the Independent on Sunday, 8 September 2002.
"Catastrophe Theories" LINK | PDF
Jason Cowley in the Observer, 8 September 2002.
"Reading Koba the Dread" LINK | PDF
Martin Stewart for "MetaMute." Undated, 2003.
Reviews of The War Against Cliche
"Writers Martin Amis Admires, and He Should Know" LINK | PDF
Michiko Kakutani for the New York Times (11 December 2001, p. E7).
"The Amis way of saying things" LINK | PDF
Mark Sanderson in the Telegraph (4 July 2001).
"Mart for Mart's Sake" LINK | PDF
Jason Cowley in the Observer (8 April 2001).
"Critical Velocity" LINK | PDF
Geoff Dyer in The Guardian (14 April 2001).
"The bland leading the blind"/"Rude Health" LINK | PDF
Richard Ingrams in The Observer (29 April 2001); scroll down to "Rude Health for Amis"
Frank Kermode in The London Review of Books. Comic note: at the end of his review, Kermode questions the existence of Amis scholar James Diedrick, which Diedrick reaffirms in the Letters section (The London Review of Books, 10 May 2001).
Jay Currie in the Vancouver Sun (15 June 2001). WORD | PDF
Reviews of Experience
"For Writers, Father and Son, Out of Conflict Grew Love" LINK | PDF
Michiko Kakutani for the New York Times (23 May 2000).
"My favourite Martin" LINK | PDF
Tim Adams for the Guardian & Observer online (21 May 2000).
Erik Tarloff for the San Francisco Chronicle (28 May 2000).
James Wood for The Guardian & Observer online (20 May 2000).
"Will They Survive?" LINK | PDF
D.J. Taylor in The New Statesman
(also reviews The Letters of Kingsley Amis)
Andrew Roe for Salon.com (26 May
"Making a Name for Oneself" WORD
Julie Burchill for The Spectator.
"Lucky Amis" WORD | PDF
Frederic Raphael for the Los Angeles Times.
Daniel Handler of the Village Voice Literary Supplement (June 2000).
"Amis's Memoir Confides and Conceals" LINK | WORD
Lisa Zeidner in the Philadelphia Inquirer (June 25, 2000).
"But First--Are You Experienced?" LINK | WORD
James Parker's free-associational account of Amis's reading from Experience at Wordsworth Books in Cambridge (28 June 2000).
"Working Class Monster" LINK | PDF1 | PDF2
Graham Joyce for salon.com, analyzes the Partington family's unhappiness over Amis's representation of Lucy Partington in Experience (29 June 2000).
"The Martin Amis Experience" LINK | PDF | RM1 | RM2
Bob Chaundy on Experience, celebrity, and Amis's relationships (12 May 2000).
Reviews of Heavy Water
"Trans-Atlantic Flights" LINK | PDF
A.O. Scott in the New York Times Book Review (31 January 1999).
James Diedrick for The Richmond Review, March 1999. LINK | PDF
"Pretentious and Hollow" LINK | WORD
Brooke Allen for the New Criterion online (March 1999).
Nathaniel Rich for The Yale Review of Books (Spring 1999).
"Not Such Light Reading" WORD
Russell Celyn Jones in The Times (24 September 1998).
Reviews of Night Train
Patrick McGrath in the New York Times, 1 February 1998
"From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: The Early Reception of Night Train" WORD | PDF
Review-summary by James Diedrick, November 1997.
"Martin Amis Dresses in Drag" WORD | PDF
James Diedrick for the Authors Review of Books (16 November 1997)
Chris Wright in the Boston Phoenix, January 26-February 5 1998
Allen Barra in Salon, 26 January 1998. LINK | PDF
"Tough Chaps Don't Dance" LINK | PDF
Walter Kirn for New York magazine, 2 February 1998
Reviews of The Information
"Raging Mid-Life Crisis As Contemporary Ethos" LINK | PDF
Michiko Kakutani for the New York Times, 2 May 1995. Excerpt: ''By turns satirical and tender, funny and disturbing, The Information marks a giant leap forward in Mr. Amis's career. Here, in a tale of middle-aged angst and literary desperation, all the themes and stylistic experiments of Mr. Amis's earlier fiction come together in a symphonic whole."
Review of The Information by Jamie Maw, from The Reader (Duthie's Books), Volume XV Number 2 (Summer 1995). WORD | PDF
Judith van Buren for Urban Desires (1995). LINK | PDF
"Misinformation in Reviews of The Information" WORD | PDF
Simon Brockwell, November 1997.
Review of Visiting Mrs Nabokov
"Novelist at Large" LINK | PDF
Francine Prose in the New York Times, 27 February 1994. Excerpt: "The articles in Martin Amis's latest collection of essays have the range and appealing ragbag variety of work done on assignment. Indeed, as he writes in the introduction, the only thing that unites these pieces is 'getting out of the house.'''
"Books: Pick & Choose with Super Mart" WORD
Maureen Freely in The Observer, 17 October 1993.
Reviews of Time's Arrow
"Time Runs Backward to Point Up a Moral" LINK | PDF
Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, 22 October 1991. Excerpt: "Mr. Amis creates a devastatingly specific portrait of the Nazis' warped mentality: only in a completely upside-down, backward world, he suggests, are their actions comprehensible. Unfortunately, the bulk of the novel seems like an extended setup for this emotional payoff -- pages and pages of sophomoric humor laid as groundwork for one huge philosophical point."
"Slouching toward Auschwitz to be born again" WORD
James Wood in the Guardian, 19 September 1991. "Amis's profound book adds a new and terrifying dimension to the Shakespearean tragic conception of time out of joint."
"The literary lip of Ladbroke Grove" WORD
James Wood in the Guardian, 7 September 1991. "He is a small man with a big head, a big voice, and an even bigger reputation: he's the most brilliant British writer of the late 20th century. What's more, he knows he's good. James Wood assesses the talent of Martin Amis."
Review of Time's Arrow by Jan Marta (February 1996). LINK | PDF
Reviews of London Fields
"Death by Request." LINK | PDF
Christina Koning for Books Unlimited, the Guardian/Observer web site (21 September 1989).
"Lust Among the Ruins" LINK | PDF
Bette Pesetsky in the New York Times, 4 March 1990. Opening: "Is the world in for a rosier future, or are we just kidding ourselves? Martin Amis, unregenerate, is determined to send us plummeting into darkness. With evangelical ardor, he sets his sixth novel, 'London Fields,' in the grimmest of times. The approach of a global catastrophe he simply calls 'the Crisis' provides the background for a bitter tragicomedy of life in a world going noisily to hell."
Review of Einstein's Monsters
"Humanity is Washed Up -- True or False?" LINK | PDF
Carolyn See in the New York Times, 17 May 1987. Excerpt: "A word about Mr. Amis's style: it's rough, new-seeming, laconic, lower-class,insolent, careless. You do not have to wear a three-piece suit to write about the nuclear world, Mr. Amis suggests, nor must you carry a sign to protest it. Just put your brain into gear and pay attention. By doing that, Mr. Amis has created stories that please at least as much as they horrify."
Review of Money
"The Great Addiction" LINK | PDF
Veronica Geng in the New York Times, 24 March 1985. Excerpt: "The plot of 'Money' is in a basic, grand tradition. A guy gets totaled. Maybe he survives - in comedy - but he's spectacularly brought down. What makes this book special and important is that it revitalizes its tradition. Its trans-Atlantic urban show-biz patter and smart literary patterns could have been just a jaded fast-lane bummer, a depleting ride in John Self's purple Fiasco -- 'a vintage-style coupe with oodles of dash and heft and twang.' But instead the book's dash and heft and twang serve a deeper energy, a reimagined naivete that urgently asks a basic, grand question: what on earth are the rest of us supposed to make of the spectacle of a fellow human getting totaled?"
Review of Other People
"Mary Lamb and Mr. Wrong" LINK | PDF
Evan Hunter in the New York Times, 26 July 1981. Excerpt: "I do not appreciate an obscure novel. The only clear signal such a book transmits to me is that a writer was either too lazy or too cowardly to reveal completely his mind or his heart. To me obscurity presumes the need for an academic middleman, an eager translator who will explain all to the sluggard reader and thereby become a collaborator in the act of creation."
Review of Success
"Men Who Hate Women" LINK | PDF
Jay Parini in the New York Times, 6 September 1987. Excerpt: "'Success' is, finally, a distasteful book, full of loathing that the author seems not fully to have understood or drawn through the crucible of art."
Review of Dead Babies
"Two Kinds of Metaphysical Joke" LINK | PDF
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in the New York Times, 16 January 1976. Excerpt: "Why does 'Dead Babies' -- with all its elegant verbal play, its nightmarish scenes, and its sexual savagery -- finally fail to stir much interest? Very simply for the good old reason that there's never any tension in the story. The babies are already dead at the beginning, and there's nothing for them to get but deader."
Reviews of The Rachel Papers
"The Rachel Papers: Not the Son of Lucky Jim" LINK | PDF
Grace Glueck in the New York Times, 26 May 1974. Opening: "Just 20 years after 'Lucky Jim,' Kingsley Amis's famously funny novel about life at a minor British university, his 24-year-old son Martin has made so bold as to produce a novel himself; though--to say it right off -- not really one to give a novelist father the sweats."
"Gothic Guesswork." LINK | Fee for Full Text
Karl Miller in The New York Review of Books (18 July 1974).