By 2009, he has still not detached himself from the night, ten years previously, when he witnessed his sister’s death. Amis can reduce even his most sombre, mirthless readers to guilty laughter, but he has not hitherto shown a capacity to provoke tears:
Yes, Violet looked forceful. For the first time in her life, she seemed to be someone it would be foolish to treat lightly or underestimate, ridge-faced, totemic, like a squaw queen with orange hair.
‘She’s gone’, said the doctor and pointed with her hand. The wavering line had levelled out. ‘She’s still breathing,’ said Keith. But of course it was the machine that was still breathing. He stood over a breathless corpse, the chest filling, heaving, and he thought of her running and running, flying over the fields.
In these closing sequences Keith is the most grievous, heartbreaking individual so far created by his author. If, as is implied, he speaks for him, then one can only feel something akin to heedful pity. But it is only a novel, is it not? Near the end the narrator raises a similar question: ‘Yes, we’re close again, he and I … I? Well, I’m the voice of conscience…’
This book is a unique, sometimes exquisite experience that begs to be returned to after a first encounter.
Richard Bradford’s biography of Martin Amis will be published this autumn by Peter Owen.
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