A new novel from Martin Amis is always a highly anticipated event and his latest, The Pregnant Widow, is a real treat. Described by reviewers as ‘close to a masterpiece’ and ‘witty and elegant’ if you are a fan of his work then get a copy now. If you haven’t read any Amis this is one of his best as, in his unique style, he writes about a group of people in 1970, holidaying in an Italian castle, at the height of the sexual revolution and moving forward 40 years fills in the characters stories since then. It is a thought provoking and subtly powerful novel.
It was summer 1970 - a long, hot summer. In a castle in Italy, half a dozen young lives are afloat on the sea of change, trapped inside the history of the sexual revolution. The girls are acting like boys, and the boys are going on acting like boys, and Keith Nearing - twenty years old, a literature student all clogged up with the English novel - is struggling to twist feminism and the rise of women towards his own ends. The sexual revolution may have been a velvet revolution (in at least two senses), but it wasn't bloodless - and now, in the twenty-first century, the year 1970 finally catches up with Keith Nearing. The Pregnant Widow is a comedy of manners and a nightmare, brilliant, haunting and gloriously risque. It is the most eagerly anticipated novel of the year and Martin Amis at his fearless best.
