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jonfaith's review against another edition
3.0
Medium intensity Amis, checking the mirror for further dissent. It shouldn't change anyone's life, but it was enjoyable.
jeannemixon's review against another edition
4.0
I found it beautifully written and strange and very moving.
It is hard to write a review without spoilers. Basically it is a novel about the 70s a period Amis describes as on the cusp of the new era when women became sexually liberated and free to behave "like boys" and then he continues on through the fallout.
The setting is an Italian castle where some twenty year olds have gone for their summer break from college. It is saturated with literary references, most memorably from Jane Austen and DH Lawrence and Kafka, so our main character becomes K in the Castle who undergoes his sentimental education at the hands of three beauties and his plain Jane girlfriend. K's understanding of the world of relationships is divided into duds, possibles, and visions. He himself and his plain Jane girlfriend are both possibles. There is a fair amount of misogyny in the book (a girl is called the "dog" for reasons it takes K a surprising amount of time to figure out) and a touch of racism (although not too much, it's there).
K himself is on the cusp of defining for himself what he wants and what he has to do to get what he wants. He is literary critic of some insight and a talented poet, but there isn't a lot of money in that. And that is where a review without spoilers has to end, except to say that there is a lot of soaring writing. The novel is told oddly from the point of view of an unidentified much older third person who is looking back on a life well lived. The narrator has been through several marriages and has a large assemblage of biological and step children.
I can see why a lot of people didn't like it, but I found it largely enchanting.
It is hard to write a review without spoilers. Basically it is a novel about the 70s a period Amis describes as on the cusp of the new era when women became sexually liberated and free to behave "like boys" and then he continues on through the fallout.
The setting is an Italian castle where some twenty year olds have gone for their summer break from college. It is saturated with literary references, most memorably from Jane Austen and DH Lawrence and Kafka, so our main character becomes K in the Castle who undergoes his sentimental education at the hands of three beauties and his plain Jane girlfriend. K's understanding of the world of relationships is divided into duds, possibles, and visions. He himself and his plain Jane girlfriend are both possibles. There is a fair amount of misogyny in the book (a girl is called the "dog" for reasons it takes K a surprising amount of time to figure out) and a touch of racism (although not too much, it's there).
K himself is on the cusp of defining for himself what he wants and what he has to do to get what he wants. He is literary critic of some insight and a talented poet, but there isn't a lot of money in that. And that is where a review without spoilers has to end, except to say that there is a lot of soaring writing. The novel is told oddly from the point of view of an unidentified much older third person who is looking back on a life well lived. The narrator has been through several marriages and has a large assemblage of biological and step children.
I can see why a lot of people didn't like it, but I found it largely enchanting.
chrispac's review
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
timweed's review against another edition
3.0
Yeah, didn't love this one. It was readable and the writing was excellent on a sentence level, but in so many places the narrative seemed deliberately obscure. It's possible that this was all smoke-and-mirrors put in place to disguise the fact that this novel, on the most basic level, is a story of adolescent sexual fetishes sustained over a lifetime, and who wants to read a book like that? To the novelist's credit I kept reading, but at the end I wasn't all that glad I did. Oh well.
monasterywine's review against another edition
2.0
First three quarters, when they were twenty in Italy, felt fun if like a much less sharp extension of the rachel papers, but then as adults, oh my God, so heavy, makes you want to kill yourself the second you get your first wrinkle, lately I feel like everything I read about real adulthood feels like this. So houellebecquian. I don’t think I enjoyed it. The first part I enjoyed reading through my fingers, felt illicit and like reading a teenage boy's diary, something I’m not supposed to be let in on, then the end something I’m not supposed to see in the sense of a snuff film
dphillips's review against another edition
4.0
Not a big Amis fan but this one won me over. Definitely a readers read
kevin_shepherd's review against another edition
3.0
I came to Martin Amis via Christopher Hitchens. Since Hitch was, arguably, the most well-read person on the planet, I had lofty expectations. For my first foray into Amis-Land, I will simply say that I am whelmed. Not overwhelmed. Not necessarily underwhelmed. Just whelmed.
The lion's share of The Pregnant Widow takes place in the summer of 1970. Our protagonist, college student Keith Nearing, is on a holiday excursion with a group of friends to an Italian castle. Here, Keith diligently but rather awkwardly navigates the sexual revolution and the burgeoning concept of free-love. He's at once a feminist and a womanizer. No. He's a womanizer who fancies himself as a feminist. No. He's a horn-dog, but a horn-dog with a heart-of-gold.
The style, structure and grammar are impeccable. Amis can make a paragraph look like a work of art. But, there is something about the way he writes women. It's as though they are not really women at all. They're men with vaginas and breasts and all the associated accessories. I often found them vapid and a bit cruel (e.g., men).
I suspect Amis is an acquired taste. He's certainly well refined and intellectual. Maybe I'll be more enthusiastic after I've read a few of his other novels(?).
The lion's share of The Pregnant Widow takes place in the summer of 1970. Our protagonist, college student Keith Nearing, is on a holiday excursion with a group of friends to an Italian castle. Here, Keith diligently but rather awkwardly navigates the sexual revolution and the burgeoning concept of free-love. He's at once a feminist and a womanizer. No. He's a womanizer who fancies himself as a feminist. No. He's a horn-dog, but a horn-dog with a heart-of-gold.
The style, structure and grammar are impeccable. Amis can make a paragraph look like a work of art. But, there is something about the way he writes women. It's as though they are not really women at all. They're men with vaginas and breasts and all the associated accessories. I often found them vapid and a bit cruel (e.g., men).
I suspect Amis is an acquired taste. He's certainly well refined and intellectual. Maybe I'll be more enthusiastic after I've read a few of his other novels(?).
mcf's review against another edition
5.0
More than wonderful. I'm a big fan of his, but Amis hasn't been this effortless, clever, or generous in years; an absolute pleasure to read. Endlessly gratifying and equally impressive.
cameronbradley's review against another edition
4.0
The Pregnant Widow is the story of Keith Nearing reminiscing about his youth during the sexual revolution of the 60’s. Most of the story is centered upon an old Italian castle where Keith, his girlfriend Lily, the blonde-haired beauty Scheherazade and some other characters are spending their summer vacation. This book is really a comedy—like a more intelligent version of American Pie—with more of a leaning towards “fratire” than traditional satire. I say this because based on several of the ratings and subsequent reviews I’m seeing elsewhere on this page, I’m assuming most women don’t find it as amusing.
Fans of Martin Amis who are accustomed to his writing style and the dark humor permeating the pages of his fiction won’t be surprised by the kinds of sentences rolling beneath their eyes:
As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get that sense that your life is thinning out, and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself; That went a bit quick. That went a bit quick. In certain moods you may want to put it a bit more forcefully. As in: OY!! That went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!.... Then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past.
Readers of Martin Amis’s father, Kinsley Amis, may also note how the The Pregnant Widow is like Kingsley’s novel Lucky Jim in reverse. One could say the comedy of Martin’s book stems from an onslaught of bad luck rather than unlikely success.
All in all, the book’s main weakness is that it beats the same kind of jokes into the reader’s head over and over again. Although I laughed out loud several times throughout, I also sighed at least half as many, waiting for the kind of cackles that came time and time again when reading books like Money and London Fields.
Nevertheless, Amis’s wit and turn of phrase, as well as those indelible laugh-lines made this a great book overall and I’m already antsy to pick up another volume.
Fans of Martin Amis who are accustomed to his writing style and the dark humor permeating the pages of his fiction won’t be surprised by the kinds of sentences rolling beneath their eyes:
As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get that sense that your life is thinning out, and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself; That went a bit quick. That went a bit quick. In certain moods you may want to put it a bit more forcefully. As in: OY!! That went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!.... Then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past.
Readers of Martin Amis’s father, Kinsley Amis, may also note how the The Pregnant Widow is like Kingsley’s novel Lucky Jim in reverse. One could say the comedy of Martin’s book stems from an onslaught of bad luck rather than unlikely success.
All in all, the book’s main weakness is that it beats the same kind of jokes into the reader’s head over and over again. Although I laughed out loud several times throughout, I also sighed at least half as many, waiting for the kind of cackles that came time and time again when reading books like Money and London Fields.
Nevertheless, Amis’s wit and turn of phrase, as well as those indelible laugh-lines made this a great book overall and I’m already antsy to pick up another volume.