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    The Pregnant Widow
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    The Pregnant Widow
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    The Pregnant Widow
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Pregnant Widow

    Written by Martin Amis

    Narrated by Steven Pacey

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    Summer, 1970. Sex is very much on everyone's mind. The girls are acting like boys and the boys are going on acting like boys. Keith Nearing - a bookish twenty-year-old, in that much disputed territory between five foot six and five foot seven - is on holiday and struggling to twist feminism towards his own ends. Torn between three women, his scheming doesn't come off quite as he expects.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateFeb 5, 2015
    ISBN9781471293528
    Unavailable
    The Pregnant Widow
    Author

    Martin Amis

    Martin Amis (Swansea, 1949 - Florida, 2023) estudió en Oxford y debutó brillantemente como novelista con El libro de Rachel, galardonada en 1973 con el Premio Somerset Maugham, publicada en España (en 1985) por Anagrama, al igual que Otra gente,Dinero, Campos de Londres, La flecha del tiempo, La información, Tren nocturno, Niños muertos, Perro callejero, La Casa de los Encuentros, La viuda embarazada, Lionel Asbo.  El estado de Inglaterra y La zona de interés, los relatos de Mar gruesa, los ensayos de Visitando a Mrs. Nabokov, La guerra contra el cliché, El segundo avión y El roce del tiempo, y los libros de carácter autobiográfico Experiencia y Koba el Temible. Su última obra es Desde dentro.

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    Reviews for The Pregnant Widow

    3.5/5

    128 ratings13 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Blurb..........


      Summer, 1970. Sex is very much on everyone's mind.


      The girls are acting like boys and the boys are going on acting like boys. Keith Nearing - a bookish twenty-year-old, in that much disputed territory between five foot six and five foot seven - is on holiday and struggling to twist feminism towards his own ends. Torn between three women, his scheming doesn't come off quite as he expects.



      I wasn’t especially looking forward to reading this, particularly after the recent train-wreck that was House Of Meetings – an absolute stinker of a book, in my opinion. However, whilst I wasn’t exactly dazzled by Mr Amis this time around, it was mostly readable and enjoyable – insofar as I didn’t loathe it - in an average-that-passed-some-time fashion, now what’s for tea?


      Amis writes about the 70’s and in particular the experiences of 20 year-old Keith on a vacation to Italy with a group of friends. The story revolves around Keith and his efforts to make the most of the increasing sexual freedoms enjoyed by the younger generation. ie he spends half the summer and a lot of the book trying to get it on with his girlfriend’s friend Scheherazade.


      Keith, an English literature student, also gives Amis the opportunity to dissect the great English novel, with constant references to characters in books by DH Lawrence and others. Never having been that interested in this prose of this period, these constant references were for me the dullest and most irritating parts of the book. I possibly dozed off at these points, and therefore can’t recall with absolute clarity what other literary giants were mentioned.


      The latter part of the book, updates us with Keith and his life; his recent relationships and woes – again not too interesting for me.


      Re-reading the above, I’m kind of scratching my head as to what I enjoyed about this; probably Keith’s pursuit of Scheherazade and the tension caused by the will he - won’t he scenario.


      Another useless piece of trivia - one of the characters, Keith’s sister Violet is based on Amis’s deceased sister Sally, so in parts the book is semi-autobiographical.


      3 from 5 for The Pregnant Widow - hopefully all of the other 10 or so Amis on the TBR pile will entertain me more, when I get to them.


      Purchased late 2011, from one of the plethora of second-hand retailers on-line.

    • 5/5
      The emptiness, the nothingness, good work. Narrations are pretty good too
    • 3/5
      Medium intensity Amis, checking the mirror for further dissent. It shouldn't change anyone's life, but it was enjoyable.
    • 2/5
      I read this when I was younger, and I loved it. I loved the atmosphere and the gradual unfurling of the plot and some of the character arcs. If I had rated it back in the day, I might've given it 4 of 5 stars.

      But now, Martin Amis and I have a complex relationship. I was so perplexed when people would say that they didn't like him as a writer.

      Despite the fact that he's a really good writer, I don't like or necessarily agree with the way he often writes female characters anymore. His representation of women can be quite problematic and not entirely fully-formed.

      He writes in a world all entirely his own, where women act or react a certain way, and men are allowed to explore themselves and their sexual fantasies or obsessions without any great repercussions, (particularly in this book).

      I think my reading tastes have just changed in the past few years since I read this book last. There's something I just can't quite put my finger on that bothers me about this book.

      I wouldn't read it again, but I might read more of Amis' work in the future (though a lot more critically).

      (Oh, I think there's a trigger warning for a non-consensual scene involving some sort of date-rape drug, so be careful there.)
    • 4/5
      A compulsively readable book. Great characters, very clever. A great read, but a rather weak ending.
    • 3/5
      The pregnant widow is not a character, but rather a metaphor of Alexander Herzen's, one which pictures a societal condition in which a widely held meme (such as sexual inhibition) is discarded before a replacement is fully developed and adopted. Youth culture of the late '60's early '70's is a case in point, says Martin Amis, and he tells the story of a collection of 20-somethings (for the most part) sharing what could have been an idyllic summer vacation in a castle in Italy, but for their struggles to cope with rapidly changing attitudes toward sexual expression and the retrograde emotions that complicate the situation. The long and short of it (mostly the long) is that people screw it up (in all senses) and make a shambles of their lives in consequence. There are many good things here, especially for fans of Amis and his narrative and linguistic conjuring tricks. From what I've read about Amis, it appears that the central character shares much of the author's biography, in particular a younger, much beloved, sister who destroys herself with alcohol and promiscuity; but, curiously, this part of the story is particularly undernourished to the point of feeling like a useless appendage. Although I did not not enjoy the book, I did get impatient with the writing in a way that I haven't with the other Amis books I've read. The prose seems excessively photoshopped; too many of the sentences seem to have been set down raw and then "enhanced" by the addition of a pulchritudinous word or two that convey little while looking great.
    • 2/5
      I did not like The Rachel Papers and, as a result, never read another Amis novel until this one. It started off well but then dragged on, becoming tedious.
    • 1/5
      This is the first Amis book I have read, and I was completely baffled by it. The characters are shallow and unlikeable, and frankly quite ridiculous. The main protaganists are the age of 21, and as a 21-year-old myself I can tell you that this is not how they think or behave, regardless of what era they are set in. The entire book had a more than surreal quality to it, which unfortunately was just not to my taste - 90% of the book is set on a summer holiday in Italy spent perving over the girls. Once the novelty of this concept wears off it really gets very dull. I wasn't alive during the sexual/Feminist revolution, and can't claim to have any interest in it either, so perhaps this just wasn't my cup of tea. But putting my political and historical opinions aside, I just didn't enjoy the book. I found myself completely detached from the book, and found myself wanting to read on just so I could get to the end quicker and read something else. I couldn't help but feel that Amis was just trying to be too clever for his own good, and I didn't understand it on any level. Not my idea of fun in a book. Having said all of that, I wouldn't hesitate to try another Martin Amis out of sheer curiosity. I'm glad I read it from the point of view of it being one of those "books to read before you die", but having ticked the box I wouldn't be interested in reading it again.
    • 4/5
      It is definitely a real piece of literature and I enjoyed reading it. I did not like all of it, and I am not sure if I actually want to read more of Martin Amis after this book, but that has nothing to do with its quality rather with its masculinity and sadness. I loved the atmosphere which Amis has created! I could feel the heat of Italian air and the mixture of boredom and excitement and of course the horniness of all the characters. It is not a book one want to swallow in a day: it does not have the plot which would capture the reader. I would say it is more like a good martini - you want to sip it little by little, taking your time to think it through and enjoying the effect.
    • 3/5
      I've been wondering what Martin Amis's writing is like, and this book seemed like it might be a good start, but I have to say if this is the best he can do, I won't be reading any more of his books. All the people and relationships and even the writing just seemed shallow - that people change over time seemed the only point.
    • 3/5
      Through his protagonist/narrator Keith Nearing, Amis explores the sexual revolution of the late 1960s. Ensconced for the summer in an Italian castle with his girlfriend, Lily; her friend, ridiculously named Scheherezade, and visited by a dwarf count; Gloria, a Scottish tease of a dominatrix with a religious bent; a gay couple; and various other characters, Keith learns what it means when the rules of the game are in flux. Truthfully, after a short while, I got tired of hearing about Keith's maneuvering to get into Scheherezade's pants, his Victorian novel fantasies about Gloria, his boredom with the loving but obsessive Lily, and his concerns that someone else would get into Scheherezade's pants before he did. I lived through this period (although, admittedly, I didn't run in a similar crowd), yet I found the novel awfully tedious. There were moments of humor, but I suspect that The Pregnant Widow will most appeal to die-hard Amis fans.
    • 4/5
      This is a very difficult book to categorise, except to say that it is pure Martin Amis, simultaneously dark and light, as it unearths the troubled desires of its characters, while providing them with nothing more profound to do than lounge around an Italian pool for an entire summer. In a different mood, I might have found it one of the most tedious books I've every read, but I'm an Amis fan (I must be the only reader in the world openly to admit enjoying 'Yellow Dog') and I'm prepared to see this as a dark satire on the sexual revolution rather than the pre-senility witterings of a dirty old man. Also, the final few chapters are brilliant as they race through the years following 1970 when the bulk of the novel is set. Those chapters make you realise that novels are as much about what is missed out as what is put in. So much is missed out, so little is provided: Amis makes sure the reader has to do the work.
    • 5/5
      I’m a huge fan of Martin Amis. This devotion has become increasingly difficult of late. Whilst I was disappointed with the “Koba The Dread” reading “The Second Plane” put me in free-fall - It was like catching a favourite uncle jack-knifed over kiddie porn. Add to this his recent intemperate outbursts on the Muslim community (that Terry Eagleton rightly described as “like the ranting of a BNP thug”) and this worship begins to become almost untenable. However I’m enough of a Trotskyist to put the politics of an author aside so I ordered “The Pregnant Widow” anyway. Although his take on the “Feminist Revolution” of the 70’s is different to mine it’s a perfect foil for his usual concerns. Lisa Allardyce, who chaired the launch event at the Martin Harris Centre counted (Judging from her contribution she should have spend less time counting and more time reading!) something like 80 instances of tits and arse, or variations thereof, which should give you a flavour? It's also peppered with literary references and reflections as Amis burlesques his way through 480 pages.If you’re not fan already there’s probably little here to change your mind but if you liked “London Fields” you should be running to the nearest bookshop.