Published in the early 1990s, this short novel by Martin Amis was nominated for the Booker Prize, ultimately losing to Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, which I haven’t read. This novel begins with a description of an older doctor thinking about his recent retirement and career as he lays in a hospital bed. But the narrative voice is immediately and noticeably strange. One the one hand it’s first person narrative presumably told by the doctor, but on the other, the doctor’s name and consciousness is told […]
They’re not saying “boo”, they’re saying “Truuuuuuue”…Detective
Ugh, I really have to pull 250 words out of thin air for this one? Okay. Here goes nothing… The most recent season of Bojack Horseman, centers around the titular character starring in a tv show called Philbert. Philbert is a hilarious skewering of male-centered nihilistic mystery dramas that most clearly mocks True Detective. Now I liked season 1 of True Detective but it’s impossible to deny how cloying the presentation is of steely eyed men trying to right wrongs in the hellish underbelly of postmodern America. Reading Night Train made me feel like I […]
Martin Amis on Nazis and the Holocaust. Win.
I don’t always like Martin Amis’s novels, but I almost always find them really interesting (more interesting than his father’s work, if I must confess). He knows how to create a wild, colorful story with characters to match and The Zone of Interest is one that I think will stick with me long after reading it. If you’ve never read Amis, this is honestly one of his most approachable works. The Zone of Interest takes a look at what it would have been like to […]