By Martin Amis
A riotous, bitingly humorous, and supremely smart novel from one in all our such a lot particular voices within the English language.
The 12 months is 1970, and Keith Nearing, a twenty-year-old literature scholar, is spending his summer time holiday in a fortress on a mountainside in Italy. The Sexual Revolution is in full-swing—a old second of exceptional opportunity—and Keith and his associates are instantly stuck up in its chaotic, ecstatic throes. but they quickly find a annoying fact: among the loss of life of 1 social order and the beginning of one other, there exists a country of liminal purgatory, as soon as defined by way of the Russian philosopher Alexander Herzen as “a pregnant widow.”
As Amis deftly explores the repercussions and effects of that one summer time, he provides us with an exact and poignant portrait of the releasing chances, and the haunting results, of swap. Expertly written and whole of wit and pathos, The Pregnant Widow is Amis at his fearless best.
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Extra info for The Pregnant Widow (Vintage International)
Sample text
He also believed that beauty was mildly infectious, given close and prolonged contact. It was a universal presumption, and he shared it: he wanted to experience beauty—to be legitimised by beauty. Keith rinsed his face under the tap, and went down to the others. Chill, moist clouds swirled above them, and all around them—and even beneath them. Slivers of grey vapour detached themselves from the mountaintop and slid lollingly down the slopes. They seemed to lie on their backs, resting, in the grooves and culverts, like exhausted genies.
Rule number two: sooner or later, each human life is a tragedy, sometimes sooner, always later. There will be other rules. Keith settled in the usual café with his Americano, his unlit French cigarette (a mere prop, now), his British broadsheet. And here it was, the news, the latest instalment of the thriller and tingler, the great page-turner called the planet Earth. The world is a book we can’t put down … And he started reading about a new mental disease, one that spoke to him in a haunting whisper.
Mm. Thanks. But I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to fall in love with her. Not that you’ve got a hope, of course. But you will. How could you not? You. You fall in love with anything that moves. You’d fall in love with female football teams. And Scheherazade. She’s beautiful and sweet and funny. ” “That’s what puts me off. She’s irrelevant. ” “Mm. Actually you do know when you’re outclassed,” she said, making herself more comfortable on the bolster of his arm. “An A-one berk like you.
