The Pregnant Widow (Martin Amis)

I hesitate to once again start a review with an anecdote concerning cover art, but, well, I couldn't really resist in the end, because it was again an important consideration in my choice of reading matter. I really don't understand why publishers release large format/hardcover versions of novels with beautiful front covers only to then release a paperback with a cover image of utter banality. Such is the case with Martin Amis' 'The Pregnant Widow', a book that I'd thought about buying ever since it came out last year, and one that I finally bought when I walked into Waterstones last week and saw that the paperback had been released with a cover photograph that makes it look like some kind of airport bonkbuster (Google the novel's title to see this monstrosity). Nervously, I walked upstairs, away from the displays of new releases, towards the 'A' section. To my relief, a lone copy of the original large format version was sitting on the shelf (see image to the left). I clutched it closely to my chest and gleefully paid the fourteen quid...who cares if I could have got it for half the price? Books are artefacts to be cherished and I want the nicest covers and spines...call me an aesthete.

Anyway, to paraphrase Polonius, onto the matter, the matter that I read. 'The Pregnant Widow' takes its title from the Russian thinker Alexander Ivanovich Herzen, who posited that all revoloutions lead not to the immediate anointing of new, successful generation, but to a period of chaos and flux where nobody sees any immediate benefits. This is the metaphorical pregnant widow Amis refers to (just in case anyone missed the point, he also quotes Herzen in an epigraph and in the novel itself). The novel is primarily set in the summer of 1970, in the immediate aftermath of the sexual revolution, that loosening up of societal codes regarding pre-marital sex that went hand in hand with the advent of rock music, the contraceptive pill and the end of post-war austerity. Women, suddenly, are in control of their own destiny as never before. Women can act like men, if they so choose. What Amis is at pains to point out is that this is no simple thing for either young men or young women to get their heads around and that, for this first generation to have their adolescence and young adulthood entirely in a sexually emancipated world, the world after the revolution caused many emotional difficulties. The summer of 1970 is, in this novel, presented as the year of sexual trauma.

The novel primarily takes place within this one summer, with the odd jump forward to the early 2000s for the sake of historical perspective, and later on, a few chapters that chronicle, in a fairly pithy fashion, the later events caused by this summer. Keith Nearing is a twenty-year-old student of English Literature on holiday in Italy with his girlfriend Lily, her best friend Scherezade, and a revolving group of acquaintances and friends. They are all staying in a castle in Campania, and do little except sit by the pool, drink heavily and read. From the very beginning, sexual tension fairly crackles in the heavy Mediterranean air as Keith tries to navigate the new sexual currents of the era. His relationship with Lily, who is not often described physically, but is implied to be of fairly average appearance, is curiously sibling-like. Their sex is functional, their dialogue filled with peppy back and forth banter. Lily hides her lack of self-esteem by playing games with Keith's libido, suggesting that he should find Scherezade more attractive than her. Scheherezade is a towering beauty in possession of enormous, perpetually naked breasts (Amis here indulges in a fair bit of pornographic description of said breasts, which are often being smothered in olive oil by the pool). Eventually, Lily's goading and Scherezade's guileless displays of her body spark in Keith an obsession with Scherezade. Little does Keith know that a third girl, Gloria, is the one person present who truly understands the power that has been invested in women by the Sexual Revolution, and her machinations (as well as her exceptionally womanly arse) complicate matters for Keith, not just for the duration of summer, 1970, but for the rest of his life...

I enjoyed 'The Pregnant Widow' a great deal for a number of reasons. Amis intuitively understands how significant single episodes can be in the context of a life, and invests the narrative with a reflective, elegiac quality which gives each word tremendous weight. There's that heady mix of humour and sadness present in the very best E.M Forster novels, and a great understanding of the naiveté of university educated youth. The dialogue is tremendous throughout, particularly between Lily and Keith, and Amis does a great job in capturing Keith's pretentious habit of quoting and analogising great sheaths of literature to illustrate his points (a dubious quality shared by yours truly). Keith (and Amis, one suspects) believes that the entire history of the English novel can be summed up by two questions- "Will she fall? How will she fall?"- and spends the Italian summer reading his way through them, from Samuel Richardson to D.H Lawrence, and wondering what will be done by novelists now that the question is a moot one. The point is that the women of the novel do not cope well with their emancipation, and neither do the men of the novel know how to take advantage of their emancipation (one is certainly left thinking that Keith's pathetic scheming to have sex with the various women in the castle is responsible for his emotionally crippled older self). This is the crux of the Hezen idea- being young in 1970 meant that it was too early to take advantage of the new freedoms and too late to subscribe to older values. Amis makes a very convincing case for this.

There are a few flaws that prevent this being an unreserved triumph: Keith's life as a fifty-something is not fully fleshed out, which leaves one wondering why one should care that the summer of 1970 affected him so deeply, and there are certain sections which come across- perhaps not intentionally- as slightly patronising about women and Feminism. In some ways, Amis might have been better off without the sections set in the modern day, though I admit that the perspective they add is important to the overall feel of the book...I just wish they were better executed.

'The Pregnant Widow' is an excellent study of relationships, of youth, of an entire era. It is smart, ambitious, funny and hard to put down. It's definitely Amis' best novel since 'London Fields' in my view, and therefore well worth reading. Just make sure you pay for the nice cover, otherwise I'll get upset, ok?