My rating for the book goes down the longer I think about it. I picked this one up at the same time as Daphne Du Maurier's "The Scapegoat" and was really surprised to find the two books, so very different in many ways, extraordinarily similiar in structure and what they offer the reader. Both rely on "finding the hidden/lost story" to create suspense and both offer the reader a set up, stock anti-hero in such a way the reader can identify with his/her glamour and sanctimoniously judge him or her at the same time. Both seem like pretty widespread and flabby conventions to me and don't speak well for the health of Western Literature. First in both books, the narrator creates an elaborate and tremendously artificial present situation in order to selectively and often vaguely disclose a more straight forward narrative that takes place in the past. The kernal reality in Other People resides in the self destructive career of Amy Hide, which seems to have reached its ultimate end (her somehow inciting someone else to kill her) just before the narrative begins. Instead of just telling her story, Amis uses the past event as a suspense device to draw us through a series of more mundane (though still melodramatic, including rape and suicide) events in the narrative's present. In order to do this, he has to create a highly artificial and unlikely frame e.g. that Amy Hide has lost her memory and is wandering about London as an amnesiac who calls herself Mary Lamb (either actually or in some fantastic heaven/hell). I think this structure is a something of a cheap trick. The dramatic weight of Mary Lamb's situation surely rests on her dark and dramatic past, and yet the reader is never clearly informed what happened. We are given one incident clearly--Amy Hide pretends to destroy her boyfriend's play--and lots of dark hints about masochistic sexual behaviour and the general consensus among those that report on her that she was really nasty. So I think if the reader is going to buy the drama of Amy Hide it's largely on the basis of his or her belief in stock misogyny. She's a Super Bitch. We don't really need to know more than that. But the narrative device of Mary learning vaguely about her past through the reportage of others obscures the flatness of that underlying reality. The frame tale, Mary Lamb's amnesiac survival and return to upper crust society, is basically just a very sentimental waif story with lots of brutality (the rape and suicide) more or less thrown in (but somehow acceptable and oddly without consequence because of Mary's dark past e.g. this is the kind of thing that happens to her, (the rape), and the kind of thing that happens to people around her (the suicide). If you take away the sex and violence, she more or less gets by on a smile and finds her Prince in the end. Neither story would hold up by itself but Amis's adept misdirection between them allows the reader to convince him or herself that two very deep and gritty stories are being told. The other convention, relied on heavily in DuMuarier and Amis, is the sentimentalization of the Anti-Hero. In it's best incarnation, the anti-hero's force comes from the discomfort he or she arouses in the reader. We can't excuse his or her conduct but at the same time we feel compelled to identify with him or her in some way. The anti-hero is a lesson in moral humility and guilt. The convention becomes sentimentalized when the narrator has found a way to take the sting out of it such that the reader can simultaneously judge the anti-hero and enjoy his or her glamour. In Other People, Amis manages this by taking away Amy Hide's memory thus turning her into Mary Lamb, the waif. We can sympathize with the waif and at the same time enjoy the glamour of her good looks and previous vaguely dark history, with the additional pleasure of feeling indignant about the injuries she's inflicted in the past. (Amis is very careful to show us any real harm she has done. Her male victims are clownish and unreal. Her sister does show up and despite all that has been suggested about her dark past seems ready to just pick things up as if nothing had happened.)How does he get away with this? That's the question. He's a really good writer of sentences for one thing. He's incredibly successful in the opening pages of creating this very vivid alienated perspective of a cityscape. One wonders what kind of book this might have been if he had just stuck to the frame, that situation, consciousness slowly coming to grips with memory. What would our world end up looking like if we could re-imagine it from that compelling perspective? I think that would have been cool. (Especially as throughout, he manages at least probably two or three genuinely startling sentences a page). Also, he tries to shoot over the heads of the readers with his outer quasi reflexive frame. The narrator as hostile/benificent authority, policeman and executioner etc... Is it possible that this is a perfect presentation of the ambiguity of authority? Is that concept cutting perfectly and with jagged symetry through all dimensions of the reality depicted? Would we not then be able to accept Amy Hide/Mary Lamb as Waif/Whore, Victim/Corrupter simultaneously? Not really. The whole "she asked me to do it" "I am the narrator" business feels forced and tagged on. Really, the narrator has no universe to live in. He's not convincing on the page (and is even allowed to leave on business as a character while he continues to narrate her story). Really he's just the conventual invisible modernist narrator who has been inexpertly conflated with a character in the story. It's too bad. I think if the book had been allowed to truly go in that direction , it would have been interesting, but of course then it wouldn't sell as well as Daphne DuMaurier.
Случайно попаднах на книгата в Столична и анотацията ми допадна. Започнах с умерени очаквания и на моменти звучеше приятно, но като цяло ѝ липсваше нещо, което да я направи... ами, автентична. Идеята за жена, която се събужда с амнезия и започва да опознава света отначало, да търси коя е била преди, ми е любопитна, но за съжаление Мартин Еймис не успява да я разгърне по интересен начин. Не можах да повярвам на Мери (или Ейми), героите бяха отегчителни, недостоверни, повече пошли, отколкото нещо друго. Все пак 2 звезди, защото на моменти имаше проблясъци и тъкмо те катализираха малкия ентусиазъм, достатъчен да стигна до края. Доволен съм поне, че не загубих излишно много време за прочита (да, чете се на едно сядане).
What do You think about Other People (1994)?
As I often find when Martin Amis's fiction.. I'm not sure how I feel about this book. It is at times deeply, DEEPLY disturbing. The actions of many of the characters are really pretty abhorrant.. and I often felt like I needed a wash after putting this down. And yet I couldn't stop reading it! The mystery at the heart of this novel pulled me in and I wanted to know what had happened to this woman.. unfortunately you don't exactly get ALL the answers. It probably does need another read to pick up more clues but I don't think I can quite cope with that just yet.Still, any book that provokes such strong feelings is one worth reading. Might not be for those not yet initated into the dark, seedy world of Martin Amis. Be warned.
—Alice
Other People by Martin Amis is an unsolvable mystery. To fully understand everything that occurs in this novel, and the meaning implied by such events, warrants several readings. Yet, once finished with it there is a strong voice screaming in the reader's mind, "I don't ever want to go back to the world that Martin Amis portrays!" Amis writes a very gritty depiction of people and human nature. The book is split into two parts. The first is the third person novel, following the life and survival of a twenty five year old woman who has lost all memory of her past and, previously assumed, common knowledge. The second part is an interjectory first person narrative by an unknown character who observes and reflects upon the actions of this woman. Other People is worth reading if only to see the provoking insights made by this unknown person. Be warned, however, that this book can be quite disturbing when it comes to the actions of its characters. Without dispute, Other People is a provoking novel about life and how people live it.
—Eleanor
I'm not finishing a lot of books lately. I can't decide if some sort of disturbing trend is emerging or if I'm not not picking the right books. Amis' Other People was thrown into the "unfinished" pile the other night. I got through quite a lot of it but, as is my usual warning sign, I realised I was skim-reading through too much of it. It wasn't bad; it just wasn't engaging for me. Amis is not known for creating sympathetic characters and, while they are not a central requirement, one misses the
—grainnemcmahon
