Heavy Water: And Other Stories

Amis, Martin

ISBN 10: 0787119121 ISBN 13: 9780787119126

Publisher: Dove Entertainment Inc, 1999

Synopsis

Martin Amis's short stories make his novels look prim. They are also more frankly satirical. Whole world's are created - or invented. In 'Straight Fiction', everyone is gay (apart from the beleaguered 'straight' community); in'Career Moves', screenplay writers submit their works to little magazines, while poets are flown first-class to Los Angeles; in 'The Janitor on Mars', a sardonic robot gives us some strange news about life in the solar system. Largely absent in the novels, the middle classes get a showing in 'Let Me Count the Times', where a man had a mad affair with himself. 'Heavy Water' portrays the exhaustion of working-class culture; 'State of England' portrays its weird resuscitation. And in 'The Coincidence of the Arts' an English baronet becomes entangled with an African-American chess hustler. The earliest story, 'Denton's Death', was first published in 1975, but the bulk of the collection can be firmly labelled 'most recent work'.

About this title

Review:

This collection of stories spans a period from 1975 to 1997, and is a good reflection of the range of Amis's writing. That writing is always skilful, and consistently seductive-- sometimes irritatingly so. Amis lures his reader into an intense interest in his characters, and then, in some unsettling way, encourages us to patronize or disparage them. It's an odd strategy, but it holds our attention. By making us uncomfortable about our own less admirable attitudes, Amis focuses us intently on his story line.

In "Coincidence of the Arts", Amis's targets are both the feckless painter Sir Rodney Peel, and the black doorman of his building and aspiring novelist Pharsin Courier, who turns to Peel for artistic encouragement. When Peel embarks on a curious sexual affair with a black waitress, it is sheer coincidence that she should turn out to be Pharsin's wife. The consequences reflect well on neither Peel nor Pharsin. In "State of England", we smirk knowingly at Big Mal, a bullshitting East Ender trying to sort out his life at his small son's sports day, but are nevertheless compelled to find out what will become of him. Familiar stories about obsessive bad sex like "Let Me Count the Times", have not stood the test of time, and Amis writes far too often about literary agents, aspiring novelists and spoilt bestsellers who surely only interest an inner coterie. Still, when he is on form, this is the short story at its best. --Lisa Jardine

Review:

"Brilliant - a remarkable feat of rhetorical beauty and overwhelming truth... A terrific collection - brilliantly varied, constantly surprising chips of a superb imagination" (Mail on Sunday)

"Amis is immaculate as a comic stylist - irresistible" (Daily Telegraph)

"This volume is essential reading for anyone remotely interested in where we are and how we got here" (Sunday Times)

"Comic inversions, fantastical celebrations and ripe satire - of popular culture, personal relationships, even the space-time continuum - all jostle in these pages... Simply ace" (Esquire)

"Amis applies his comic timing, his perfect pitch and his curatorial eye to some of the burning issues of our time" (New York Times Book Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Dove Entertainment Inc
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0787119121
• ISBN 13: 9780787119126
• Binding: Audio Cassette