London Fields
I absolutely just burned through London Fields, read it in a week. It's one of my favorite books. It made the Top Ten Novels list I did on a podcast back in 2016. (You can find that here.) I'm not shocked I loved it again. I will make a case that it's one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. I recommend the hell out of it.
So I'm going to *not* try and spoil anything essential with the rest of this post, but if you're interested in reading it and don't want to hear *anything* else about its conceit or its characters, I'd stop reading. Because I'm going to defend London Fields against a couple of its most common criticisms.
Famously, Martin Amis's book didn't make the short list for the Booker Prize the year it came out (1989 -- and who gives a damn about the Booker Prize or any other prize for art) because two of the panelists were offended by its treatment of women. I will stipulate that it's easy for anyone to say, "You're being *too* P.C.!" over anything, and the moment we allow knuckle-draggers whose favorite go-to line is, "Gee, you can't say *anything* these days!" to rule the day, we take big steps back. I can understand where a feminist criticism of London Fields might come from: Nicola Six is the doomed murderee (I'm not giving anything away! It's announced on the first page!) but there isn't much reason offered *why*...some hand-waving about being at the end of men and not wanting to age and lose her looks...it is, I'll admit, pretty thin stuff. Through this lens, Nicola is a bloodsucking harpy standing in for all bloodsucking harpies, leading to the charge of, "She's so problematic." And "Can't women characters be full people?" In this case, I think that lens is ill-applied.
London Fields is explicitly a neo-noir. It's an upending of the convention: the detective, the gangster, the foal, the moll. It's a mystery story in which the solution to the mystery is presented on the first page. And *everyone* is irredeemable. The men certainly don't come off better than Nicola, even if they do have clearer motivations. Nicola is a harpy? Nicola is a blood-sucker? Good heavens, get a load of *those* guys: Keith and Guy and Sam. (Just get a load of Keith! Get a load of Keith Talent! And get a load of the baby Marmaduke!) And seen through the dark lens of neo-noir, with Nicola, Amis is updating Phyllis Nirdlinger, the femme fatale from Double Indemnity. And I don't want to spoil that book, either, but let's just say the endings of those two characters are resonant. The subversion is the extent to which Phyllis-as-Nicola is suddenly in control. The subversion is the way she wraps the men around her little finger. The subversion is that her plan *works*. In a couple of the past few novels I've reviewed on here, it's seemed I've felt it necessary to explain my admiration for a book despite complaints about supposed "regressive treatment of women." And I don't want to be the one blurting, "Gee, you can't say *anything* these days!" But context matters. If you're writing a neo-noir, if you're turning the detective novel inside-out and showing off the shimmering viscera, I think I forgive you for not writing Nicola Six as Clarissa Dalloway. (Others might not feel the same, and I get it.)
Another criticism leveled against London Fields is that it's overwritten, that it's overmuch, that it's over the top. (*I'm* even writing like Amis here. It's contagious!) And all I can say to that is...everyone's entitled to their opinion, but the wild circus act, the give-no-shits floridity...it sure works on me. "People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there. Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking the other way."
I say read the book. It's great.
So I'm going to *not* try and spoil anything essential with the rest of this post, but if you're interested in reading it and don't want to hear *anything* else about its conceit or its characters, I'd stop reading. Because I'm going to defend London Fields against a couple of its most common criticisms.
Famously, Martin Amis's book didn't make the short list for the Booker Prize the year it came out (1989 -- and who gives a damn about the Booker Prize or any other prize for art) because two of the panelists were offended by its treatment of women. I will stipulate that it's easy for anyone to say, "You're being *too* P.C.!" over anything, and the moment we allow knuckle-draggers whose favorite go-to line is, "Gee, you can't say *anything* these days!" to rule the day, we take big steps back. I can understand where a feminist criticism of London Fields might come from: Nicola Six is the doomed murderee (I'm not giving anything away! It's announced on the first page!) but there isn't much reason offered *why*...some hand-waving about being at the end of men and not wanting to age and lose her looks...it is, I'll admit, pretty thin stuff. Through this lens, Nicola is a bloodsucking harpy standing in for all bloodsucking harpies, leading to the charge of, "She's so problematic." And "Can't women characters be full people?" In this case, I think that lens is ill-applied.
London Fields is explicitly a neo-noir. It's an upending of the convention: the detective, the gangster, the foal, the moll. It's a mystery story in which the solution to the mystery is presented on the first page. And *everyone* is irredeemable. The men certainly don't come off better than Nicola, even if they do have clearer motivations. Nicola is a harpy? Nicola is a blood-sucker? Good heavens, get a load of *those* guys: Keith and Guy and Sam. (Just get a load of Keith! Get a load of Keith Talent! And get a load of the baby Marmaduke!) And seen through the dark lens of neo-noir, with Nicola, Amis is updating Phyllis Nirdlinger, the femme fatale from Double Indemnity. And I don't want to spoil that book, either, but let's just say the endings of those two characters are resonant. The subversion is the extent to which Phyllis-as-Nicola is suddenly in control. The subversion is the way she wraps the men around her little finger. The subversion is that her plan *works*. In a couple of the past few novels I've reviewed on here, it's seemed I've felt it necessary to explain my admiration for a book despite complaints about supposed "regressive treatment of women." And I don't want to be the one blurting, "Gee, you can't say *anything* these days!" But context matters. If you're writing a neo-noir, if you're turning the detective novel inside-out and showing off the shimmering viscera, I think I forgive you for not writing Nicola Six as Clarissa Dalloway. (Others might not feel the same, and I get it.)
Another criticism leveled against London Fields is that it's overwritten, that it's overmuch, that it's over the top. (*I'm* even writing like Amis here. It's contagious!) And all I can say to that is...everyone's entitled to their opinion, but the wild circus act, the give-no-shits floridity...it sure works on me. "People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there. Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking the other way."
I say read the book. It's great.
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