Book Review: A Martin Amis Retread
Apr 30, 2010 Entertainment
The book takes its title from the Russian writer Alexander Herzen’s contention that a departing social order leaves behind not a fully formed replacement but a “pregnant widow,” not yet ready to birth the new mode of being. Set mainly in 1970, the novel concerns the aftereffects of the sexual revolution, a time when everything was changing. But, as Amis sees it, 40 years on, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.