Dead Babies

by Martin Amis

Book Overview

If the Marquis de Sade were to crash one of P. G. Wodehouse's house parties, the chaos might resemble the nightmarishly funny goings-on in this novel from "one of the most gifted novelists of his generation" (TIME).

"Amis is a born comic novelist in the tradition that ranges from Dickens to Waugh.... His] mercurial style...can rise to Joycean brilliance" --Newsweek

"Amis's version of the bleak and wrecky...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067973449X
• ISBN13: 9780679734499
• Release Date: April 1991
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Feelgood hit of the century.

This book touched me in places no other novel could. I felt so impressed by Amis' ability to handle drug abuse in a way that wasn't belittling or mocking as far as the victims went. He makes it very clear that these are people who deserve all the help and sympathy we can give them. Page after page, Amis' empathy flows while he presents truly alive characters who any one of us would want to meet and help. If you want a book that makes you feel like life is worth living again, this is your book. You could make the difference. Help an addict today!

Brilliance on paper

This book is thoroughly stylish, threatening while seemingly light-hearted and funny. Although written awhile ago the characters are all around us. The drugs, sex and life of such amount to an emptyness so vast the mind boggles and Amis has done a supreme job ripping the heart out of the illusions. Amis goes deep and then even deeper. It has been an absolute pleasure translating this book.

One of Amis's Best

This is Martin Amis at his misanthropic best. An enjoyably mean-spirited nose-thumbing in the direction of those oh-so-British comedies of manners, with an ending as dark and unpleasant (and surprisingly funny; it's one of Amis's most satisfying punchlines) as you might expect from a book called 'Dead Babies.'

Fear and Loathing in Martin Amis

If, upon completion of this insanely entertaining, laugh out loud funny, letter-perfect book, Martin Amis had laid down his pen and slunk off into the shrubbery to become one in a long line of literary recluses, Dead Babies would be as well-known as Catcher in the Rye, and bookish tourists clutching Minoltas in their inky fingers would be keeping 24-hour vigil outside his cabin hoping to get a shot of his legendarily decayed teeth. As it is, Martin Amis has ignobly continued to be productive, having the audacity not only to write an even better book 15 years later ( London Fields ), but to contract a new set of California-ready choppers! With an ego like that, Amis will surely have to keel over stone-dead before he gets a sliver of the recognition so obviously due him. And he deserves nothing less than to be known as The Author of the Age. By some undisclosed law of nature, there can be no more than one or two writers in each generation who have the desired combination of verbal duende, intellectual vivacity, and -- here's the deciding factor -- a knack for distilling the essence of the times. These authors could be termed Zeitgeistians: Shakespeare, Byron, Doestoevsky, Fitzgerald, Hemingway -- world-class Zeitgeistians one and all. I picture them with one antennae pressed against the ground, listening for the subterranean presence of that which everyone feels, and of which no one speaks. This is what Amis does for the modern reader, not once, but in book after book after book -- Dead Babies earns a special place in his body of work because it shows more narrative distance and a firmer grasp of story construction than The Rachel Papers ( his first novel ) but, like Rachel, is all about youth, the illusion of life, of hope, and promise. And it is youth, especially at the end of our century, that charts the course of cultural progress. Dead Babies marries all these concepts, making a very clear distinction between image and reality, between what everyone says is fun -- sex, lots and lots of sex -- and what everyone really knows, deep down in their heart of hearts -- sex, mostly, is just another reminder of how alone we all are. That it arouses and amuses while pushing across these depressing truths is a tribute to Amis's prodigious gift as an entertainer. In fact, Dead Babies is sort of like sex -- while you're plugging away, everything seems right with the world. But then before you know it -- BANG -- it's over, and you're snapped violently back into cold hard reality, naked as the day you were born, and much more ashamed. But here's the good news: while many of us can't get laid, all of us can read Dead Babies -- and then feel better about not getting laid. Thank you Martin Amis.

Compelling, dazzling, grotesque.

I gave this book to a friend of mine, and she said it was the only book she'd ever read that made her physically ill. But she finished it. This book chronicles the adventures of some English twentysomethings sharing a house during the 70s. Of course there's the typical sex and drugs, as well as bizarre art movements, a family of dwarves, physical violence, and murder; but the real star is Amis' style -- vibrant and horrifying, never letting you respond any one way at any particular time. His control over the language is astounding, his authorial voice ever-elusive, and his moral sense is omnipresent and yet never simplistic or heavy-handed. This book is not genius, but it is an early work by a wunderkind who would realize his genius in "London Fields". Read it for the fun, the style, and the stomach pains.