As the years have gone on, believing in Amis' fiction has presented more and more hurdles. That a man would write this way to his family—"in a state of permanent lost temper"—seems unlikely, but Amis' prose is worked to such a fine, filthy froth here it's easy to overlook this minor quibble. This is a powerful story about envy and decline, and the long-term corrosive effects of crime on the soul, in which brotherhood emerges not as a bloodline but a kind of fatal embrace.
As the years have gone on, believing in Amis' fiction has presented more and more hurdles. That a man would write this way to his family—"in a state of permanent lost temper"—seems unlikely, but Amis' prose is worked to such a fine, filthy froth here it's easy to overlook this minor quibble. This is a powerful story about envy and decline, and the long-term corrosive effects of crime on the soul, in which brotherhood emerges not as a bloodline but a kind of fatal embrace.