London Fields by Martin Amis

It is the last year of the second millennium, and the city of London is gearing up for the grand finale. The rest of the planet is also preparing for this very special occasion: everywhere, the air is full of dread. The totality of the abuse humankind has visited upon the earth has generated a bizarre, never-before-seen environmental phenomenon that seems poised to unleash an extinction-level event. That is, if massive numbers of nuclear warheads aren't launched first. Elsewhere, the president's wife has been stricken with some unnamed malady and lies near death in a medical facility, giving apprehensive Londoners just one more thing to bang their heads about. Concern over the latter seems disproportionate (not to mention absurd) given the dire circumstances facing the world but the first lady's health holds front and center in the tabloid headlines. Which may not be a bad thing, necessarily. With their attention directed away from the destruction at hand, some residents find it easier to go about their everyday activities. A select few, at least as far as our book is concerned, have their own plans for ushering in Armageddon, which, if predictions are correct, should occur on December 31, 1999, right around the time the ball is dropping in Times Square.

Such is the frenzied background for writer Martin Amis's perplexing and darkly funny London Fields. This 1989 novel may skirt the boundaries of sci-fi, murder mystery, melodrama and comedy, but London Fields is, distinctly, its own thing. Here, Amis (son of the novelist Kingsley Amis) creates a sophisticated, propulsive, post-modern work of literature that many regard as his masterpiece (Time Magazine included London Fields in its list of 100 best novels of the 20th Century). It is a highly English piece of work containing shades of Shakespeare, Dickens, James and Agatha Christie. (Amis, himself, claimed that his writing was influenced by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and his own father.)

At 470 pages, London Fields moves at its own pace, which may be frustrating to those accustomed to reading airport novels that reduce each chapter to 3 or 4 action-packed pages. Most of the action in London Fields requires time and attention in order to truly appreciate the deviously convoluted plot and delicious verbiage. The book begins with a failed American author named Samson Young, who happens to be dying. Sam, suffering from writer's block for decades, has temporarily taken up residence in the posh London bachelor pad of wealthy, bestselling superstar (and apparent super-stud) Mark Asprey, while Asprey installs himself in Sam's (much) more modest New York apartment. It's sort of like what Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslett did in the 2006 film, The Holiday, although the resemblance ends there. 

Serving as our omniscient narrator, Sam guides us--leisurely, at first--through the ongoing spectacle of a beautiful woman and the two men who love her (or, at any rate, want her). The sordid details unfold through Sam's observations of the characters, their various conversations and confessions, and Sam's own interstices where he directly addresses the reader. Every word, every move, every betrayal is faithfully recorded by Sam, who, after being apprised of the situation, is inspired to turn his new "friend's" dramas into his long-delayed masterpiece: it smells like a blockbuster in the making. Or so he thinks. 

Central to the story is Nicola Six, the femme fatale, a glittering, malignant narcissist who has, thanks to the largesse of a long series of lovers, done quite well for herself. And yet, she realizes, the time has come to face her murderer. Before the end of the millennium, before the end of everything. Since childhood, Nicola has somehow known things would happen well before they actually did. Chiefly, she has always known that her destiny is to become a murder victim. A glamorous, well-furbished victim, to be sure, but murdered, nonetheless. Now, she only wants to find her killer, a very special man who can be counted on to make sure she embraces her destiny. And Nicola Six is ruthless in her quest. 

One day, late, fresh from attending a funeral, this gorgeous Black Dahlia lifts her veil and steps across the threshold of the seedy Black Cross. Bellying up to the bar, she attracts the attention of every man in the place, especially that of Keith Talent and Guy Clinch, both of whom are unlikely acquaintances of Sam, who has become fascinated with their vastly different personalities. 

Keith is a violent, low-level criminal who also happens to be a master darts player. Guy, on the other hand, is part of the landed gentry, a naive, boring beauty who inherited a job title without having a clue what to do with it. Both men are unhappily married--Keith to a woman he regularly abuses, Guy to an heiress who regularly abuses him. Keith has a small, sweet-natured daughter, Kim, whom he casually ignores and--possibly--uses as an ashtray. Guy's son, Marmaduke, around Kim's age, is a freakishly oversized psychopath who terrorizes the household to the extent that multiple nannies are replaced every week. Guy loves this hell spawn anyway, and has the cuts, bruises, and puncture wounds to prove it. Keith is wildly promiscuous, with different women stashed around the area to sate his considerable sexual appetite. (He's like a human water sprinkler spreading semen in every direction). Guy, for his part, is considerate and faithful to his undeserving spouse who humiliates him and can hardly bear to be in the same room with him. Still, Keith and Guy, along with Sam, have--against all odds--become friends, of a sort: bar buddies whose relationship will soon extend beyond the nicotine-stained walls of the Black Cross as all are drawn into the dark web of Nicola Six. 

But, in this moment, while Keith and Guy appraise this mysterious woman in black, she is busy sizing them up. Suddenly, she knows: one of these men is her murderer. So, she must get busy. Before they've even been introduced, Nicola also knows that their lives will be destroyed, as well. From the sideline, Sam realizes that he saw Nicola Six earlier in the day, clad in her funeral attire as she dropped a folded letter into a trash container outside Mark Asprey's flat. Nicola recognizes him as well. Because as Sam hurried out to retrieve her note from the garbage, she was standing a short distance away. Watching him. Why Sam rescued her missive and chose to read it is as confounding as how they both would wind up in the same lowdown pub a few hours later. 

Soon, Sam becomes Nicola's sole confessor and partner in crime. He listens and writes, and abets Nicola in her dark pursuits, in which he has become an active participant. She can't not die, he reasons. The book has to have an ending. But with the millennium approaching, the sky falling, bombs bursting in air, and the first lady on her last legs, Nicola and Sam need to step on the gas, especially if they're going to get her dead before he expires. (To say nothing of the rest of Earth's population.)  And so this is how the initially sympathetic Sam, painfully waning at an increasingly rapid rate, becomes as monstrous as those he chronicles (although he is somewhat redeemed by an unexpected act of valor towards the end of the book). He needs to leave behind some trace of his life's efforts, even if it comes posthumously. 

It's a twisted business, alright, but London Fields is not a work I could easily shrug off. It's wonderfully written, highly intelligent, impressively convoluted and filled with dark humor and characters whose malice is offset by their believability. Among the many questions left unanswered in London Fields, is why doesn't Nicola take a bottle of sleeping capsules or take a long walk off a short pier? Or just wait, like the rest of us, for the universe to collapse or to be blasted into particles by the nuclear blast? Why all this drama, all this cruelty so carefully designed to be not only her undoing, but of the two men who covet her? Why?  It doesn't matter. Chalk it up to the quirky brilliance of Martin Amis's mind to extract humor from these perverse situations and even infuse them with pathos. In the end, the book's (numerous) dubious plot devices are forgivable and, in most cases, necessary in order to preserve the novel's unruly and enigmatic spirit. 

With the right script and crew, London Fields could be perfect fodder for a Netflix limited series. In fact, it did get the big-screen treatment back in 2018. FYI: this adaptation has a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes so, perhaps, the less said about that the better. 

**Note: all paintings displayed in this post are by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918). From top to bottom: Gustav Klimt in a Light Blue Smock (1913), The Reclining Woman (1917), Portrait of a Man with a Floppy Hat (1910), The Embrace (1917). More about Egon Schiele in a later post. 

 

 

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