Other People
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Other People
Other People is a novel by British writer Martin Amis, published in 1981.
| Other People | |
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 1st edition |
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| Author(s) | Martin Amis |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
| Publication date | 1981 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback, Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-0-224-01766-4 |
| OCLC Number | 7395704 |
| Dewey Decimal | 823/.914 19 |
| LC Classification | PR6051.M5 O8 1981b |
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Contents
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Plot
Mary, an amnesiac young woman, wakes and tries to piece together her previous life while using a new identity.
Style
The book starts as a comedy, slips into a thriller, and ends a horror story.
Amis saw the novel as a kind of overall investigation. "Mary (the main character) doesn't know what her role is," Amis explained in 1981.[1] "Because of this, men start questioning their own attitudes towards women, and even about themselves. When one's role is undermined, you begin to look at everything around you in a different light."
Reception
The book was well-received in Britain and the United States. The writer J.G. Ballard called Other People "Powerful and electrifying... 'Other People' is a metaphysical thriller, Kafka reshot in the style of Psycho." Writing in Britain's The Guardian, poet, writer and critic Anthony Thwaite spoke the novel's "enormous confidence of address," continuing, "Other People is 'about' a descent into Hell, Hell being 'other people'-- it's a very strange and impressive performance."[2] The Times found "For all its savagery... Other People is a funny book... an achievement light years ahead of his earlier novels."[3] Judy Dempsey wrote in The Irish Times, "Amis has done something important in 'Other People.'"[4] In the Los Angeles Times, Charles Champlin called Amis "an English literary celebrity who, like Norman Mailer and Truman Capote here, finds himself in the columns more often than some film stars," and found the book, "an ingenious and mischievous piece of writing, nothing like a mystery with a tidy ending...a tour de force."[5]
Composition
Other People is the first book Amis completed after choosing to become a full-time fiction-writer; he had been on-staff at the New Statesman until 1979. Amis told an interviewer "I wanted to leave to devote myself to full-time writing. It was the responsibility of doing something else, not wholly connected with my writing that exhausted me from writing what I wanted. I enjoyed it, but I felt writing was more important."[6]
References
- ^ Judy Dempsey, The Irish Times, "In Search of Realism," March 31, 1981
- ^ Anthony Thwaite, The Guardian, "Season in Hell", March 8, 1981
- ^ The Times, "Other People," March 5, 1981
- ^ Judy Dempsey, The Irish Times, "In Search of Realism," March 31, 1981
- ^ Charles Champlin, The Los Angeles Times, "A beguiling baffler without neat ends," June 21, 1981
- ^ Judy Dempsey, The Irish Times, "In Search of Realism," March 31, 1981
External links
- Narrative and narrated homicide in Martin Amis's Other People and London Fields (Brian Finney)
- Review on The Fiction Circus
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Martin Amis |
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