Six stories and a polemical introductory essay, each of them about
nuclear destruction. Weaving and passionate and un-neat, the essay
may be best of all, whatever the merits of its arguments (Amis
sides with Jonathan Schell, claiming that he is of a haunted
generation to which nuclear weapons can't be just some unthought
hidden nightmare). But the stories will disappoint: one's a
shameless Bellow-clone ("Bujak and the Strong Force"); one a
toneless post-Apocalypse fable ("The Little Puppy That Could"); and
the one in which Amis' swing seems loosest, most comfortable - "The
Time Disease" (a complete inversion of today's society, in a future
when age means health and an attack of youth is like getting AIDS)
- marshals some of Amis' brilliant jaundice but gives it nowhere
especially to go at such short length. So, sober purpose and
cri-de-coeur aside, it's a book that ultimately reads like pure
razzmatazz ("I remember what the sky was like, when the sky was
young - its shawls and fleeces, its bears and whales, its cusps and
clefts. A sky of gray, a sky of blue, a sky of spice. But now the
sky has gone, and we face different heavens") - style doing
content's chores. Amis is an important writer because his nose is
so close up to the very worst, very most self-compromising. But
here the nose lifts a little, to look down in sorrow - and the
angling just doesn't come off. (Kirkus Reviews)
An ex-circus strongman, veteran of Warsaw, 1939, and Notting Hill rough-justice artist, meets his own personal holocaust and 'Einsteinian' destiny; maximum boredom and minimum love-making are advised in a 2020 epidemic; a virulent new strain of schizophrenia overwhelms the young son of a 'father of the nuclear age'; evolution takes a rebarbative turn in a Kafkaesque love story; and the history of the earth is frankly discussed by one who has witnessed it all. The stories in this collection form a unity and reveal a deep preoccupation: '"Einstein's Monsters" refers to nuclear weapons but also to ourselves,' writes Amis in his enlightening introductory essay, 'We are Einstein's monsters: not fully human, not for now.'
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