Library Journal
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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. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The bright, no longer so young, hope of English fiction doesn't exactly bomb on this outing--it's more a crash landing (at 480 pp.) into the ""big"" issues of our day: sadomasochism, environmental destruction, random violence, threats of nuclear war. The book is set in 1999 (it's billed as a ""murder story for the end of the millennium"") and is centered upon the dark, unwholesome beauty Nicola Six, who is gifted with a foreknowledge of events, including her own murder, which is scheduled to take place on her 33rd birthday. Nicola is responsible for her own brutal death as only a victim can be in Amis' epistemology: even though the murderer has not yet murdered, Nicola ""was already a murderee."" Not that she has our sympathy: Nicola is like a spider sitting in the middle of her web, conducting a long, maddening tease--even though she still doesn't know who will do the murder, the pages here are spent filling out, in dense and sordid detail, clues and counterclues. The two suspected men symbolize dual sides of English life: Keith, a petty criminal whose mind is filled with tabloid sex and violence (""Keith didn't look like a murderer. He looked like a murderer's dog""), and Guy Clinch (""A good guy or at least a nice one""). Their tangos with Nicola are filtered through the lens of an American hack-journalist, Samson Young, who is suffering from writer's block (so that Nicola, as she full well knows, is a gift from the gods, as she theatrically dumps her diaries into the dustbin opposite his window) and dying of a mysterious disease. Young will be the fall guy in a plot of patent coincidence, all ironically underlined by the narrator. As if to lift the moral tone of the novel (""Crawling through the iodized shithouse that used to be England . . .""), or to act as substitute for a reader's emotional involvement, nuclear war is used as filler, apocalypse as local color. Chill cynicisms from Amis in his longer form--for those who care to follow. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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Amis has been writing dark, sardonically powerful novels ( Money ; Success ) over the past 10 years, but this hugely ambitious, apocalyptic vision of moldering lives in a London tottering on the edge of extinction leaps far beyond them. Relentlessly bitter, often brutally funny, hypnotically readable, it may also be quite opaque in places to an American readership. It is the convoluted tale of Nicola Six, a brilliant femme fatale convinced that she will be killed by one of two men she has brought into her life, men who are at once wonderfully created characters and figures strongly symbolic of two aspects of the British psyche: Keith Talent, scabrous petty crook, compulsive fornicator, racist and sexist, lost to all shades of human feeling except a passion for darts, a pub game at which he aspires to be a champion; and Guy Clinch, a hereditarily wealthy, well-mannered but terminally inhibited man whose basic decency seems irrelevant to the world of Nicola and Keith. There is also a narrator in the persona of the novelist himself; he writes actual chapters meditating on his characters and the progress of the story--interpolations which could have been fatal to the narrative but are so skillfully interwoven that they become part of its grim, headlong texture. There are also two charmingly portrayed babies--Keith's, an angelic, suffering little girl; and Guy's Marmaduke, a horrendously violent infant who eats nannies for breakfast--outstanding among a cast of Dickensian richness and variety. What may keep the book from being as successful on this side of the Atlantic as at home (it was for weeks Britain's No. 1 bestseller) is its density of British references--the language (Keith's is stunningly mimicked), the pub atmosphere, the London geography--and the palpable sense of doom Amis evokes for the city as the millennium nears and the sun sinks ever lower. But adventurous readers will be thrilled by the book's somber passion, its virtuoso style and daring range. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Publishers Weekly
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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. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Library Journal
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Amis's (www.martinamisweb.com) darkly comic look at late 20th-century London and the despairing state of Western civilization was originally published in 1989 and is newly available on audio (the only other recording, on audiocassette, is no longer available). At the book's center are failed criminal/aspiring professional darts player Keith Talent; Guy Clinch, a rich, bored banker; Guy's son, Marmaduke, arguably the most horrendous infant in all of literature; Nicola Six, a party girl with a death wish; and the unreliable narrator, Sam Young, an American with writer's block. As these and assorted other colorful characters interact, Amis considers the not-always-fulfilled allures of love and fame. Adopting a gruff American accent, British actor Steven Pacey captures Sam's fascination with the characters' blunders and his barely concealed desire to manipulate their fates. This superb audio treatment of a great novel will appeal to those who enjoy serious fiction that attempts to encompass societal woes without being didactic. Darts fans may also be amused.-Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. Lib. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.