London Fields (1989)

This is a fantastic book. Some people think it's intimidating, that it's hard. I'm here to tell you its not. Amis's prose is clear and succinct. In many ways this is the bestselling murder mystery it appears to be. But it is also much, much more. If you want, it can be read just for plot. For the more inquiring reader, there's a lot going on beneath the text.

Yeah, I think everybody should read this, but at the same time Amis really frustrates me. There is always too much to say. I can't decide what to talk about. I've read this book a number of times, and during the most recent read-thru, more than ever, the "global situation," "the cold war," "the crisis" really struck me.

Maybe because it has become dated (even though I don't really think it has). So the cold war as we knew it in the 80's ended. I don't think that's any reason to stop fearing holocaust. And then there's the ever elusive Nicola . . . is she real? Is she for real? And then what about Sam's role? The actual narrative structure is fascinating. There's this loop between Nicola as the creator and Sam as the storyteller . . . Amis playing with the modernist idea of the unreliable narrator . . .

But at the center of the novel is Nicola-the sultry, sexy, svelte Nicola Six. She is the controller, the head gal in charge. At least, she thinks she is. As my good buddy WaltLockley once said, "She's 34 and not only single, but alone, aloof, emotionally self-sufficient, and she can see the future-in outline, anyway. Her project is to bring about her own destruction. She picks out a killer. And Nicola is magnificently erotic, a force of nature, a goddess." London Fields is ostensibly her story, with all the other stories circling above or under her magnetic presence.

Of course, this is not just a murder mystery. If it is a murder mystery at all, it is a postmodern murder mystery. As a product of the postmodern world, everything appears to be more complicated than it is. Or maybe it's really that complicated. Which leads into how I read Nicola Six. She isn't a nice person and she is a negative force. Yes, she is the center of the novel. She is bad. Very bad. And her power comes from not being able to stop herself from continuing to be bad. HOWEVER, she is not evil incarnate. The men she toys with are innocents (strange, when referring to Keith, but true). Keith Talent is a cheat, a swindler, quite possibly a wife and child abuser, and aspires to be a professional darter. Yet, he is able to take the world as it is, all its ugliness and pain, and still dream of a positive, of a future. Why else would he be handing out those damn brochures?

And Guy-the rich one-well, he's so wrapped up in the catastrophe of Marmaduke, all he wants is to escape. Before the child, the ugliness and pain didn't exist, and now he has an overabundance-more than a human can actually deal with. Explaining this completely could be a pretty hefty text, so let me condense it by saying that these two yokels, these two buffoons, are innocents-especially compared to Nicola who knows how it will all work out. Her presence is the absence of hope-because she knows the ending. And that power is tragic, but that power is linked with the nuclear, atmospheric stuff-it's planetary, and she's the only one that's tapped in.

The yahoos haven't a chance. The tension between the foreground and the background is essential to my reading of this book. In Experience, Amis talks about how he and his classmates were taught at a very young age that climbing under their desks would save them from the atom bomb. Young Martin found the idea absurd that his flimsy desk lid would save him from destruction-and this is the idea that he is playing with in London Fields.

But back to Nicola. I think at points she is a 3D She-Hamlet, and at other points she is an unbelievable-sex-goddess-cartoon. She is fantasy. Well, she sees herself as the fantasy, and Sam lets her. But this only works if we believe Sam, the epitome of the unreliable narrator. Do we believe Sam? The way I see it, Nicola isn't real or construct, she is metaphor. The whole thing is metaphor, given the atmospherics. The only believable thing Sam tells us, is that the whole thing is metaphor-which he feels is unbelievably lucky, since he claims it is true.

Yet all of the characters are at many points flat. Keith and Guy are as ridiculously uncredible as Nicola-after a fashion-all of them points on the "Black Cross" (Sam making the fourth). They are inexorably linked together, and their improbableness meshed with their supposed reality, enhances the idea of them is metaphor, Which is why this read I became very concerned with the idea of "the crisis."

Even though Sam is telling the story, Nicola always thinks she is in control. Who do we believe? Sam tells us he isn't capable of coming up with fiction, that the story is all too real. Yet nothing in life is ever as unflawed as this story. Nicola cannot be that "on top of the situation" and Keith cannot be that much of a degenerate and Marmaduke cannot be that bad and Guy cannot be that rich, ad infinitum.

Ultimately, I think the whole thing isn't about the cast of characters at all. It's about London Fields. It's about the Crisis. It's about the Bomb. It is 'weather.' It's the destruction of the planet. It is the end of all that we know, understand, see, smell, feel, believe. It's the end. And the sexy foreground isn't about the death of Nicola. It's about Nicola as postmodern. It's about love. It's about the death of love. And (not to sound like a beatle), what are we without love? Are we this cast? Are we this book?

The near apocalyptic world of London Fields shines from within, the glow of nuclear holocaust. But the Bomb seems like the background-ever present, ever important, while the story itself is a metaphor for life at the end of the century before the end of the cold war. In an overarchingly postmodern world we meet Nicola Six, the murderee, set on orchestrating her own demise.



Recommended: Yes