Amazon.co.uk: House of Meetings: Martin Amis: Books

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Product Description

Independent, October 17, 2006
One of: `The ten best Autumn Reads' chosen by John Walsh.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Times
"Brings to life its nameless protagonist's existence in the
post-war Russian labour camps" --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews

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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

Our greatest living writer, 25 Sep 2006

By	Stuart M. Field "i am batman" (norwich) - See all my reviews

This review is from: House of Meetings (Hardcover)

It's sometimes easy to forget Amis's talent amidst all the bullcrap that gets written about him. He is an extremely talented writer who has become a target of lesser writers who write off his novels without seemingly reading them (see some of the negative reviews of 'Yellow Dog'). Never trust reviewers! Hee Hee!
Amis is a postmodernist writer with a conscience whether its the environment ('London Fields) or harming effects of capitalism ('Money') and in this 'short novel'he considers the prison camps of Stalin and the long term effects this imprisonment has on the narrator and his brother. Both brothers are in love with the same girl and the novel traces the fight to possess her but also the fight to stay alive and what humans are capable of when they are reduced to animal-like status.
Brilliantly written, moving, tragic and oddly contemporary in his observations of the abuse of power and injust imprisonment (Quantanamo anyone?) this is quality Amis. My only problem with being that I wished it could have been a little longer and I was sure there was meant to be two other stories with it? Where did they get to Martin?

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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

Amis returns to form, 6 Oct 2006

By	A reader (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: House of Meetings (Hardcover)

"House of Meetings" marks a welcome return to form for the author. Amis has written some wonderful novels in the past, and this is in the same league. He deals with a massive subject - Stalin's Terror and the Gulags - but focusses on a romantic triangle involving two brothers, both political prisoners, and the girl they both love.
Beyond that, the book is very well written, with many clever and memorable observations, and a vivid perspective on life in an Arctic prison camp.

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

Probably best avoided, 20 Dec 2006

By	A thinking reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: House of Meetings (Hardcover)

I found this a very irritating piece of work, as it fails to purvey any sense of the physical or emotional environment of the protagonist. On gulags, one is better served by Solzhenitsyn's "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich". On sexual jealousy and frustration, well, where do we start? Amis has nothing new or particularly interesting to say, other than the simple sentence: "There were conjugal visits for inmates at the gulags."

Perhaps I had been spoiled for this book by having recently read James Meek's "The People's Act of Love", also about Russia, but far more credible. Amis's people are bits and pieces. Where Meek evokes, shocks and entertains, Amis clunks from one set-piece to another, as though building his novella out of pre-formed scenes.

I picked up this book because it had been compared with Ian McEwan's masterpiece "Atonement". But whereas McEwan's narrative is rich and complex, Amis's runs in one dimension. While neither author has direct knowledge of his subject, McEwan at least steeps himself in his research, whereas Amis's scant detail and failure to maintain an atmosphere render his little story thoroughly unconvincing.

Perhaps my most trenchant criticism of this little book is, in common with rather a lot of contemporary UK or US fiction, it is a short story extruded beyond its natural length. House of Meetings would have been compelling at a quarter of the length, or could have been a diverting episode in a greater work.

Probably best avoided: there are so many more interesting things to read.

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