Lionel Asbo: State of England
Read Lionel Asbo: State of England Online
Authors: Martin Amis
Lionel Asbo: State of England
Martin Amis
Knopf (2012)
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Tags: Fiction, General
Fictionttt Generalttt
A savage, funny, and mysteriously poignant saga by a renowned author at the height of his powers.
Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England's notorious Anti-Social Behaviour Order), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine. He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love (and to protect a family secret that could be the death of him). But just as he begins to lead a gentler, healthier life, his uncle—once again in a London prison—wins £140 million in the lottery and upon his release hires a public relations firm and begins dating a cannily ambitious topless model and “poet.” Strangely, however, Lionel's true nature remains uncompromised while his problems, and therefore also Desmond's, seem only to multiply.
From Bookforum
Lionel Asbo
. . . reads as
Money
's thematic sequel. A portrait of an underclass thug who wins the lottery,
Asbo
amplifies the earlier novel's hyperbolic farce . . . Sizing up the media culture that the John Selves of the world designed, pitching his voice somewhere between Dickensian melodrama and J. G. Ballard dystopia, Amis squints contemptuously at the dimming sun of the British Empire. — Troy Patterson
Review
"A joy— and strangely life-affirming... It certainly has much of the dazzling prose that made his earlier works so stand-out. As ever he makes the dreadful funny, the grotesque poetic. But there's something else, a tenderness and humanity... Amis seems to have affection for all his characters [in what] could be seen as a meditation on social mobility... Though it satirises a society in decline it is also, in the end, a story about the triumph of education over ignorance, love over hate." —Carole Midgley,
The Times
[U.K.]
"
Lionel Asbo
crackles with brilliant prose and scathing satire [and is] savagely funny... So who could predict that, from this deliciously nasty setup, an author the
New York Times
once called 'fiction's angriest writer' would craft a novel so... Dickensian, a novel with such... I hate to even say it...heart... What follows is hilarious and strangely compelling—a gleefully twisted
Great Expectations
... Amis adopts a big, playful storytelling voice in this book. He riffs like a jazz master, in and out of vernacular, with brief gusts of description, all driven by a tight bass line of suspense." —Jess Walter,
Publishers Weekly
“A surprisingly tender story… For all its scabrous humour, this is at heart an old-fashioned tale in which goodness may still find a way to triumph.” —The Daily Mail [U.K.]
“The novel comes at you and comes at you and keeps on coming. It never flags… It is a great big confidence trick of a novel—an attack that turns into an embrace—a book that looks at us, laughs at us, looks at us harder, closer, and laughs at us harder and still more savagely. It is every inch the novel that we all deserve.” – Nicola Barker,
The Guardian
[U.K.]
“A wicked satire [and] frequently wincingly funny. Amis’s aim at the totems and mores of common fame is as unerring, and his phrase-making as pyrotechnically dazzling, as ever…Amis also writes with real – and uncharacteristic – tenderness.” – Mick Brown,
The Telegraph
[U.K.]
“Martin Amis has let himself go at last, [with] the broadest comedy he has ever published… Amis’s delight in the incorrigible is genuinely Dickensian.” —David Sexton,
Evening Standard
[U.K.]
“Amis’ phenomenal vim and versatility, anchoring roots in English literature, and gift for satire power this hilariously Dickensian, nerve-racking, crafty, bull’s eye tale of a monster and a mensch…This deliciously shivery, sly, and taunting page-turner provokes a fresh assessment of the poverty of place, mind, and spirit and the wondrous blossoming of against-all-odds goodness.” —Donna Seaman,
Booklist
Lionel Asbo: State of England
Martin Amis
Knopf (2012)
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Tags: Fiction, General
Fictionttt Generalttt
A savage, funny, and mysteriously poignant saga by a renowned author at the height of his powers.
Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England's notorious Anti-Social Behaviour Order), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine. He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love (and to protect a family secret that could be the death of him). But just as he begins to lead a gentler, healthier life, his uncle—once again in a London prison—wins £140 million in the lottery and upon his release hires a public relations firm and begins dating a cannily ambitious topless model and “poet.” Strangely, however, Lionel's true nature remains uncompromised while his problems, and therefore also Desmond's, seem only to multiply.
From Bookforum
Lionel Asbo
. . . reads as
Money
's thematic sequel. A portrait of an underclass thug who wins the lottery,
Asbo
amplifies the earlier novel's hyperbolic farce . . . Sizing up the media culture that the John Selves of the world designed, pitching his voice somewhere between Dickensian melodrama and J. G. Ballard dystopia, Amis squints contemptuously at the dimming sun of the British Empire. — Troy Patterson
Review
"A joy— and strangely life-affirming... It certainly has much of the dazzling prose that made his earlier works so stand-out. As ever he makes the dreadful funny, the grotesque poetic. But there's something else, a tenderness and humanity... Amis seems to have affection for all his characters [in what] could be seen as a meditation on social mobility... Though it satirises a society in decline it is also, in the end, a story about the triumph of education over ignorance, love over hate." —Carole Midgley,
The Times
[U.K.]
"
Lionel Asbo
crackles with brilliant prose and scathing satire [and is] savagely funny... So who could predict that, from this deliciously nasty setup, an author the
New York Times
once called 'fiction's angriest writer' would craft a novel so... Dickensian, a novel with such... I hate to even say it...heart... What follows is hilarious and strangely compelling—a gleefully twisted
Great Expectations
... Amis adopts a big, playful storytelling voice in this book. He riffs like a jazz master, in and out of vernacular, with brief gusts of description, all driven by a tight bass line of suspense." —Jess Walter,
Publishers Weekly
“A surprisingly tender story… For all its scabrous humour, this is at heart an old-fashioned tale in which goodness may still find a way to triumph.” —The Daily Mail [U.K.]
“The novel comes at you and comes at you and keeps on coming. It never flags… It is a great big confidence trick of a novel—an attack that turns into an embrace—a book that looks at us, laughs at us, looks at us harder, closer, and laughs at us harder and still more savagely. It is every inch the novel that we all deserve.” – Nicola Barker,
The Guardian
[U.K.]
“A wicked satire [and] frequently wincingly funny. Amis’s aim at the totems and mores of common fame is as unerring, and his phrase-making as pyrotechnically dazzling, as ever…Amis also writes with real – and uncharacteristic – tenderness.” – Mick Brown,
The Telegraph
[U.K.]
“Martin Amis has let himself go at last, [with] the broadest comedy he has ever published… Amis’s delight in the incorrigible is genuinely Dickensian.” —David Sexton,
Evening Standard
[U.K.]
“Amis’ phenomenal vim and versatility, anchoring roots in English literature, and gift for satire power this hilariously Dickensian, nerve-racking, crafty, bull’s eye tale of a monster and a mensch…This deliciously shivery, sly, and taunting page-turner provokes a fresh assessment of the poverty of place, mind, and spirit and the wondrous blossoming of against-all-odds goodness.” —Donna Seaman,
Booklist
CONTENTS
2006: Desmond Pepperdine, Renaissance Boy
