The Pregnant Widow Book

An arse writing with his dick about tits.

I bet you if I told Amis that I found his book mildly offensive to women, he'd retort, well you've probably got small tits or you've not been laid recently. That's the voice I heard reading this novel. And I found it boring, empty and irritating - the novel was a page turner for the wrong reasons. Amis is no doubt a great writer - the prose is hands down perfect - but what he writes about is a joke: an unfunny, long and forgettable joke. Are we supposed to laugh at Keith, the psychologically priapic student oogling his girlfriend's best friend's huge tits? Or the sexual interest of the book, Sheherazade, a sexually frustrated aristocrat who can't find a man to satisfy her? Most probably the punch line's with the reader who's just bought another Amis book to be dazzled by the prose but left with a lack-lustre story.
A group of university students spend a summer in the 1970s in a castle in Italy (as you do) and the men watch the girls and the girls watch men watching the girls. The women are usually topless and the men talk about women's bodies and sex, clever men ask deep and meaningful questions like: do men like tits because they look like arses? Should arses and tits be on the same side of the body? Why do men like big tits? With no plot or real characterisation, it just comes across as desperate.
Don't think this book is about sex: no one has sex much in it, if they do, Keith does with Lily, his girlfriend, that fact is only mentioned in passing. Nor do they do anything on this summer holiday apart from read the English clssics and speculate about each other's vital statistics.
The Italian backdrop feels superfluous and the decade doesn't really ring true either. There's nothing to learn about the sexual revolution. Nor about the characters. Amis has written some pretty sub-standard books, some great books - some of my favourite books - but we continue to read him because he always writes so well. Unfortunately this is not someone `back in the game' or a book worthy of The Information, Night Train, Money, London Fields or the House of Meetings. And what's so annoying is that it should be! So why doesn't he write with his heart? Because in those brief moments when he does - it's acidic, hilarious and fizzing with insight. The main story is interspersed with Keith's point of view as a many times divorced father going into old age - it's profound, philosophical, poetic. He writes about Keith's sister, which is heart breaking and deep - but unfortunately, his focus is lead away by boobs sunning themselves by the pool. A shame and such a waste of immeasurable talent and originality.