Other People: a Mystery Story by Martin Amis (English) Paperback Book

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When she awakes and realizes she is all right, that Time is starting again, it seems fitting that she should lie on a spindly white trolley in a white room. A nearby voice tells she is on her own now and to be good. Was she not good before? This story unfolds a metaphysical thriller where jealously guarded secrets jostle with startling insights.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

A new reissue series of Martin Amis's novels to mark his 70th birthday'Other People had me purring with pleasure' The TimesLike a ghost or a fugitive, Mary roams through London - pursuing and pursued by memory and forgetting, by the compelling Amy Hide and the charming Mr Wrong...Martin Amis sustains an unnervingly high degree of suspense as Mary and the reader yearn to grasp what has happened to Mary's past and ponder what its loss has gained her. Unfolding is a metaphysical thriller where jealousy guarded secrets jostle with startling insights. Other People is ambitious and accomplished, heralding for Amis an unexpected new direction as a novelist and for the rest of us an experience not to be missed.

Notes

'Other People had me purring with pleasure' The Times

Author Biography

Martin Amis was twenty-three when he wrote his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973). Over the next half century - in fourteen more novels, two collections of short stories, eight works of literary criticism and reportage, and his acclaimed memoir, Experience - he established himself as the most distinctive and influential prose stylist of his generation. To many of his readers, Amis was also the funniest. His intoxicating comedic gifts express a profound understanding of the human experience, particularly its most shocking cruelties, and Amis wrote with pathos and verve on an astonishing range of subjects, from masculinity and movie violence to nuclear weapons and Nazi doctors. His books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages, provide an indelible portrait and critique of late-capitalist society at the turn of the twenty-first century. He died in 2023.

Review

For all its savagery - Other People is a funny book - an achievement light years ahead of his earlier novels * The Times *Powerful and electrifying... Other People is a metaphysical thriller, Kafka reshot in the style of Psycho * J. G. Ballard *One of the most gifted novelists of his generation * Time *Amis is a force unto himself... There is, quite simply, no one else like him * Washington Post Book World *Other People is "about" a descent into Hell, Hell being "other people" - it's a very strange and impressive performance * Observer *

Promotional

'Other People had me purring with pleasure' The Times

Kirkus US Review

"A Mystery Story" indeed - one in which everything is teasingly shrouded in mystery: the what, the when, the why, and (above all) the who. A young, beautiful woman wakes up (in a hospital?) and passively ventures out into London - with total amnesia, a determination to be "good," and utter innocence of human ways: "No one out there reminded her of anything much." She takes the name Mary Lamb from overheard doggerel. She acquires bits of life-knowledge from observation and from books (mostly out-of-date). She wanders into a low-life crowd; she allows herself to be adopted by the sluttish, alcoholic Botham family (which leads to unpleasant sex and some violence); then she moves on to the Church-Army Hostel for Young Women, a waitress job, a pity-motivated liaison (her lover suicides when she drops him), and a stint in the platonic hi-rise harem of rich, burnt-out Jamie. But while "Mary" moves through this icily pessimistic parable of life - from innocence to fear of "other people," from openheartedness to pathetic love-hunger - a cool, jaded, dangerous-sounding narrator looks in on her from time to time: "I hope Mary will be all right. . . . She will learn fast, I'm sure. . . . If you ever make a film of her sinister mystery, you'll need lots of progress-music to help underscore her renovation at the Bothams' hands. . . ." And another, somewhat more realistic character looks in on her too: John Prince, a policeman who believes that "Mary" is really Amy Hide: a missing person thought to have been murdered (a very bad girl). So eventually "Mary" will switch back to "Amy," moving in with Prince - who'll protect her from "Mr. Wrong," the man who tried to murder her. But is Prince himself the murderer - and/or a projection of Amy's own evil (the Prince of Darkness, as it were)? Or is the whole story a good/evil battle going on in Amy's pathologically divided mind? Or. . . . ? Amis (The Rachel Papers, Dead Babies) seems quite purposely - perversely, even - to have made his mystery capable of any number of interpretations: the carefully orchestrated hints (recurring words, suggestive names) will keep susceptible readers tuned in, even when Mary's much-exploited innocence becomes illogical or shtick-y. And though this weird little book ends up as a disappointment - like one of those long shaggy-dog jokes with no punchline - Amis' page-by-page narration (alternately spooky, grim, and nastily funny) offers substantial, creepy rewards along the way. (Kirkus Reviews)

Review Text

For all its savagery - Other People is a funny book - an achievement light years ahead of his earlier novels

Review Quote

For all its savagery - Other People is a funny book - an achievement light years ahead of his earlier novels

Promotional "Headline"

'Other People had me purring with pleasure' The Times

Details ISBN0099769018 Author Martin Amis ISBN-10 0099769018 ISBN-13 9780099769019 Format Paperback Imprint Vintage Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom DEWEY 823.914 Birth 1949 Media Book Language English Pages 224 Publisher Vintage Publishing Subtitle a Mystery Story UK Release Date 1999-06-03 Year 1999 Publication Date 1999-06-03 AU Release Date 1999-06-03 NZ Release Date 1999-06-03 Alternative 9781446401378 Audience General We've got this

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