Heavy Water: And Other Stories - Hardcover

Amis, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067697144X ISBN 13: 9780676971446

Publisher: Knopf Canada, 1999

Synopsis

Martin Amis's short stories make his novels look prim. They are also more frankly satirical. Whole world's are created - or invented. In 'Straight Fiction', everyone is gay (apart from the beleaguered 'straight' community); in'Career Moves', screenplay writers submit their works to little magazines, while poets are flown first-class to Los Angeles; in 'The Janitor on Mars', a sardonic robot gives us some strange news about life in the solar system. Largely absent in the novels, the middle classes get a showing in 'Let Me Count the Times', where a man had a mad affair with himself. 'Heavy Water' portrays the exhaustion of working-class culture; 'State of England' portrays its weird resuscitation. And in 'The Coincidence of the Arts' an English baronet becomes entangled with an African-American chess hustler. The earliest story, 'Denton's Death', was first published in 1975, but the bulk of the collection can be firmly labelled 'most recent work'.

About this title

Review:

These nine stories span a period from 1975 to 1997 and are a good reflection of the range of Martin Amis's writing, which is always skillful and consistently seductive--sometimes irritatingly so. Amis lures his reader into an intense interest in his characters, and then, in some unsettling way, encourages us to patronize or disparage them. It's an odd strategy, but it holds our attention. By making us uncomfortable about our own less admirable attitudes, he focuses us intently on his story line.

In "Coincidence of the Arts," the targets are the feckless painter Sir Rodney Peel and his black doorman, aspiring novelist Pharsin Courier, who turns to him for artistic encouragement. When Peel embarks on a curious affair with a black waitress, it is sheer coincidence that she should happen to be Pharsin's wife. The consequences reflect well on neither man. In "State of England," we smirk knowingly at Big Mal, a bullshitting East Ender trying to sort out his life at his small son's sports day, but we are nevertheless compelled to find out what will become of him. Familiar stories about obsessive bad sex such as "Let Me Count the Times" have not stood the test of time, and Amis's tales of literary agents, aspiring novelists, and spoiled bestseller writers may only interest an inner coterie. Still, when he is on form, Amis's work is as deeply alluring as it is amusing. --Lisa Jardine, Amazon.co.uk

From the Inside Flap:

Nine dazzling stories from the critically acclaimed and best-selling author of Night Train, London Fields, and Money, Heavy Water and Other Stories is a literal landscape of Martin Amis's unique and alluring fiction.
        
Once you enter Amis's disorienting and hilarious world, you'll never be the same. Every poem will remind you of "Career Move," a story in which poets are flown first-class to Hollywood in order to take meetings with sandal-shod producers, to review sales in the millions, while screenwriters struggle in near-oblivion for publication in obscure, unread journals. Never again will you consider communication with extraterrestial life-forms without conjuring apocalyptic images of evil from "The Janitor on Mars." Witness the world of "Straight Fiction," where everyone is gay except the beleaguered straight community, and our country's "don't ask, don't tell" policy evokes images of Amis's inverted, and outrageous, vision.
        
From "Denton's Death," first published in 1975, to "What Happened to Me on My Holiday," published in 1997, Heavy Water and Other Stories is the most engaging and complete overview of Martin Amis's short fiction available today.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Canada
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 067697144X
• ISBN 13: 9780676971446
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208