It's not often I start a novel expecting to absolutely hate it, only to be completely blown away by how much I enjoyed it. But that's exactly what happened with *Time's Arrow* by Martin Amis. I often find myself struggling with Holocaust fiction, usually preferring non-fiction accounts, and I honestly thought this book would be nothing more than pretentious nonsense – a self-indulgent literary gimmick. Boy, was I wrong. I found *Time's Arrow* to be a work of sheer brilliance. The central charac...

You could start with the last line first to get a slightly different review experience. Mohammad Al-Arabi Until April 25, 2016 From April 24, 2016 [Image of a GIF] The End --- Abdul Rahman Al-Sawaaf's cover for that Arabic edition remains the best thing about that version. [Image of a book cover] However, I didn't enjoy the author's heavy-handed storytelling at all, and it wasn't just the translator's style. Despite the idea being excellent... the protagonist, Odilo, whatever his name ...

We can never change our past. No matter how bad we were, no matter how good we were -- time, the man-made structure that decides what we do in our lives, how often we celebrate occasions, when we are born, when we die, what people think about us after we die, does not discriminate. The concept behind Martin Amis's *Time's Arrow* is gimmicky at its core, but works only because of the author's intelligence and craftiness. It's a clever and thought-provoking read that's worth exploring if you're ...

In his Afterword, Amis tips his hat to a passage by Kurt Vonnegut in *Slaughterhouse Five*, where a character watches a film running in reverse, showing American planes collecting bombs from Dresden and miraculously repairing the devastated city. The bombs then return to a factory where their dangerous contents are broken down into harmless minerals. Amis cleverly uses Vonnegut's technique of running everything backwards to explore the Holocaust and the men who carried it out. This is a truly un...

“They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye.” ― Martin Amis, Time's ArrowI liked the prose and liked the execution, but something still felt a little off. It's like a cog is missing in time's reverse gear, making this Martin Amis story stutter rather than smoothly roll backward. I enjoyed the narrative told in reverse; extracting the real meaning while reading the meaning ba...

BE KIND, REWIND If I were reading Finnegan’s Wake with my morning coffee, Proust at the dentist, and Herta Müller in the bathroom, maybe I would have found this book 'simple' – and perhaps even 'immediate' and 'direct.'That's not the case, and it wasn't: it’s a work that seemed difficult to me, very tiring to get through, and I'm glad to be rid of it.I might not have even made it to the end if, after a few pages, I hadn't had the bright idea to skip to the afterword, where the quote from Primo L...

She can't help it if her best isn't all that great, but here we are. She's painstakingly typed out her half-assed, kinda-relevant review, then clicked on the stars – three of them, yellow and cartoonish, her breezy summary of an author's painstakingly crafted offering to twentieth-century literature. He probably spent years writing and researching this thing, which she's already rated like it's an eBay seller transaction, and reviewed with all the thoughtfulness and care of an Adderall-fueled th...

The Non-U USPThis short book, **Time's Arrow** by Martin Amis, is essentially one long gimmick: clever as a writing exercise, but not really worth publishing or reading. Once the novelty of a story told in reverse wears off, there’s just not much point, and I lost interest (though I did finish it). And it's not even that original! Kurt Vonnegut had the same idea in a brief scene in "Slaughterhouse Five" (see my review HERE), as did Borges in his short story A Weary Man’s Utopia, found in "The Bo...

Second time through, and it's still brilliant. Check out my review of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five for my theory that *Time's Arrow* by Martin Amis was at least partially inspired by a scene in Vonnegut's novel where the main character watches a war movie playing in reverse. Highly recommended. Looking for unusual book recommendations? You've found it with *Time's Arrow*.

English Standard Version (©2001)For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.“What is it with them, the human beings? I suppose they remember what they want to remember.”-Time’s ArrowThis is what I want to remember: that I bought this off a wheeled cart for two quarters. That in a bad economy, this was a great investment. Martin Amis is a genius in this book. Pure genius. His structure starts with the last r...