Synopses & Reviews
A riotous, bitingly funny, and supremely clever novel from one of our most distinctive voices in the English language.
The year is 1970, and Keith Nearing, a twenty-year-old literature student, is spending his summer vacation in a castle on a mountainside in Italy. The Sexual Revolution is in full-swing—a historical moment of unprecedented opportunity—and Keith and his friends are immediately caught up in its chaotic, ecstatic throes. Yet they soon discover a disturbing truth: between the death of one social order and the birth of another, there exists a state of liminal purgatory, once described by the Russian thinker Alexander Herzen as “a pregnant widow.”
As Amis deftly explores the repercussions and consequences of that one summer, he presents us with a precise and poignant portrait of the liberating possibilities, and the haunting consequences, of change. Expertly written and full of wit and pathos, The Pregnant Widow is Amis at his fearless best.
Synopsis
The year is 1970, and the youth of Europe are in the chaotic, ecstatic throes of the sexual revolution. Though blindly dedicated to the cause, its nubile foot soldiers have yet to realize this disturbing truth: that between the death of one social order and the birth of another, there exists a state of terrifying purgatory--or, as Alexander Herzen put it, a pregnant widow.
Keith Nearing is stuck in an exquisite limbo. Twenty years old and on vacation from college, Keith and an assortment of his peers are spending the long, hot summer in a castle in Italy. The tragicomedy of manners that ensues will have an indelible effect on all its participants, and we witness, too, how it shapes Keith's subsequent love life for decades to come. Bitingly funny, full of wit and pathos, "The Pregnant Widow "is a trenchant portrait of young lives being carried away on a sea of change.
"From the Hardcover edition."
Synopsis
A riotous, bitingly funny, and supremely clever novel of a twenty-year-old literature student in 1970 who's about to discover the liberating possibilities and haunting consequences of social change.
"If beauty has gone out of the world, it has just reentered literature through this strange, sparkling novel." --The New York Review of Books
The year is 1970, and Keith Nearing, a twenty-year-old literature student, is spending his summer vacation in a castle on a mountainside in Italy. The Sexual Revolution is in full-swing--a historical moment of unprecedented opportunity--and Keith and his friends are immediately caught up in its chaotic, ecstatic throes. Yet they soon discover a disturbing truth: between the death of one social order and the birth of another, there exists a state of liminal purgatory, once described by the Russian thinker Alexander Herzen as "a pregnant widow."
As Amis deftly explores the repercussions and consequences of that one summer, he presents us with a precise and poignant portrait of change. Expertly written and full of wit and pathos, The Pregnant Widow is Amis at his fearless best.
About the Author
Martin Amis is the author of eleven previous novels, the memoir Experience, and two collections of stories and six of nonfiction, most recently The Second Plane. He lives in London.