In his appearance at Banff a week ago, Amis said that part of his new “maturity” was that he has decided not to worry if people found his writing “sentimental” — that it was much easier to write a convincing “baddie” than it was to adequately portray a “goodie”. Unfortunately (perhaps because I liked the satire so much), I was not able to make the shift with him when the novel began to focus more on Des, certainly a more decent person than Lionel, but for me a less interesting one. I would not go so far as to say it was sentimental, but it certainly headed in that direction.

I’ve never been able to decide what to make of him. His prose is nice, but he seems to recycle his male protagonist from book to book. The typical lower middle class, blue-collar stereotype: brutish, criminal, violent and cruel. Lionel Asbo strikes me as more of the same.

That’s part of why I think this is tongue-in-cheek satire (comic is in fact a much better description) not a serious critique of the wealth of targets Amis manages to find.

I did reread the first half of the novel before I wrote my review, just to confirm my first impressions that it was an impressive work. I’ll admit I saved a reread of the second half for later — “a peculiar warmth” is not a phrase that I would have come up with but it is a perfect description of my impression on the novel.

Thanks.

And, for regular visitors here, a “standy-by” note. This seems to be the year of the “state of England novel” — perhaps “state of London” might be more appropriate. John Lanchester’s Capital was my first and I loved it. Lionel Asbo is the second. From reviews that I have read, Keith Ridgway addresses much the same theme in a very different way in Hawthorn and Child ( for a review check out John Self here). Ridgway’s novel just arrived in my postbox today — I’ll get to it in a week or two. We are Olympic fans in this household and we’ll be steeped in television portrayals of London for the next few weeks — these three novels seem to provide an excellent alternate point of view.