Brilliantly read.

Thought provoking to read, this is more entertaining when the characters are so well voiced by Stephen Pacey. He brings out the humour and makes it well worth repeat listening.

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enjoyable but not vintage Amis

Martin Amis' latest book is arguably a throwback to some of his earlier work. It is not the savagely funny satire of 'Money' or 'London Fields', rather it's a comedy of sexual manners set against the changing attitudes and sexual mores starting in the 1970s - the Pregnant Widow of the title is, as it were, between the death of the old age and the birth of the new. The first half of the book is engaging and funny, sometime painfully so, but he rather loses his way in the second half when he seeks to follow what happens to his various characters - his mix of seriousness and humour just doesn't gel that well, and structurally the book becomes unbalanced as he appears to rush through the years.

Still, all that said, it's an interesting and enjoyable book - I dont think Martin Amis could write a dull sentence if his life depended on it. And with Stephen Pacey, who has narrated several of Amis' earlier books, in top-notch form, Pregant Widows makes for a splendid audiobook which holds the attention easily right the way to the end.

Not vintage Amis but still well worth a listen.

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7 people found this helpful

Dazzling fun, not for the faint-hearted

Although self-denigrating class ridicule is embedded in the humour, this time Martin Amis does more sex than he does his familiar social satire and political finger-pointing. He pulls off the carnality masterfully despite numerous hair-raising slip-ups. Under the covers the plot is all the classic novels you’ve ever read, and the poetry too, transposed to a period in living memory. We are in the vanguard of the army of the sexual revolution with all its vulnerable naïvité and hurt. We are made privy to the picaresque shenanigans of a house-party’s summer of love and then its winter too. Since our protagonist is a literature student who begins his holiday reading-list with “Clarissa”, we suspect a warning: he and we are in for a long wait before we get to a climax - in so far as there is one. Meanwhile there is Amis’ irreverent romp from Austen to Auster, Fielding to Forster, Eliot to Emmanuelle, and always Shakespeare; and the bonus of Stephen Pacey’s hilarious, perfectly pitched narration.

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