London Fields

From Publishers Weekly In this very British tale, femme fatale Nicola Six manipulates racist, sexist scoundrel Keith Talent and well-mannered, naive Guy Clinch as an omniscient narrator/novelist spies on the trio in order to develop his book. ''Relentlessly bitter, often brutally funny, hypnotically readable, it may also be quite opaque in places to an American readership,'' said PW. Author tour. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Amis's disappointing new novel follows the machinations of promiscuous Nicola Six, a psychic who senses that she is to be murdered by one of two men she meets in a London bar. She systematically humiliates both--prole darts champ Keith and posh, ineffectual Guy--only to discover that for once her powers have misled her. Set ''at the end of the millennium'' against the background of a vaguely defined political/ecological/cosmological crisis, this novel is far longer than its thin content warrants. What can Amis have against these minimally developed characters that he devotes nearly 500 pages to demolishing them? There's disgust aplenty here--but little else. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/89. - Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A blackly comic late 20th-century murder mystery set against the looming end of the millennium, in which a woman tries to orchestrate her own extinction—from'one of the most gifted novelists of his generation'(TIME). “Lyrical and obscene, colloquial and rhapsodic.'—The New York TimesFirst published in 1989, London Fields is set ten years into a dark future, against a backdrop of environmental and social decay and the looming threat of global cataclysm. As the dreaded Y2K approaches, Nicola Six, a “black hole” of sex and self-loathing, has chosen her thirty-fifth birthday, November 5, 1999, as the date of her own murder. Whom to manipulate into killing her is the question; her choice wavers between violent lowlife Keith Talent, who is obsessed with winning a darts tournament, and a dimly romantic banker named Guy Clinch. When Samson Young—a writer suffering from a long bout of writer's block—stumbles upon these three, he believes he has found a story that will write itself. A highly unusual mystery with an unexpected twist at the end, London Fields is also a corrosively funny narrative of pyrotechnic complexity and scalding moral vision.

London Fields is Amis's murder story for the end of the millennium. The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts. Or is the killer the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch?

Publishers Weekly

In this very British tale, femme fatale Nicola Six manipulates racist, sexist scoundrel Keith Talent and well-mannered, naive Guy Clinch as an omniscient narrator/novelist spies on the trio in order to develop his book. ``Relentlessly bitter, often brutally funny, hypnotically readable, it may also be quite opaque in places to an American readership.''

El año, un fantasmagórico 1999. Podría ser el último otoño del planeta. Un calor anormal reseca la tierra, azotada por tormentas de polvo. Y cuando por fin llega la lluvia, no cesa hasta parecer un diluvio eterno. El clima político no es menos caótico y una crisis internacional se acerca a su punto de fisión. Este panorama apocalíptico constituye el más que adecuado telón de fondo para la terrible y divertida novela de uno de los más talentosos escritores británicos de nuestros días. Campos de Londres se inicia con una perfecta inversión del tópico: entre los detritos de Portobello, la víctimacomienza a acechar a su victimario, la asesinada dará caza al asesino Cursed with premonitions since childhood, Nicola forsees her own murder, and sets out to make the two most likely suspects pay in advance for what one of them is going to do to her A supreme femme fatale has been cursed with premonitions. She forsees her own murder, singles out the two most likely murderers, and attempts to make them pay in advance