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    Time's Arrow
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    Time's Arrow
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    Time's Arrow
    Audiobook5 hours

    Time's Arrow

    Written by Martin Amis

    Narrated by Steven Pacey

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    Time's Arrow tells the story, backwards, of the life of Nazi war criminal, Doctor Tod T. Friendly. He dies and then feels markedly better, breaks up with his lovers as a prelude to seducing them and mangles his patients before he sends them home... Escaping from the body of the dying doctor who had worked in Nazi concentration camps, the doctor's consciousness begins living the doctor's life backwards.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateFeb 5, 2015
    ISBN9781471293481
    Unavailable
    Time's Arrow
    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 Time's Arrow

    3.5/5

    688 ratings30 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Well read. A strange tale to be sure that left me thinking this. As we live life forward, we remember times past. As we live life backwards, there can be nothing to remember! But they did!!
    • 5/5
      This one took me a bit to get into. The backwards timeline can really screw with you. I remember, while reading this thing on the couch, thinking in terms of backwardsness concerning real life. (I stopped myself midthought and gave one of those I-am-so-silly chuckles.) But, once you get deep into the book, you become obsessed with beginnings and then...well...let's just say the end is a radical departure from the beginning. A wonderfully brilliant book.
    • 4/5
      Oh Martin, you are so clever.
      I am a sucker for experimental writing, and writing a narrative in reverse, might sound too gimmicky, but I found it quite such an interesting take.

      The main character does seem flat and gets less like able as the book goes on, but the perspective was always thought provoking and compelling.

      Overall I’d say that at times this book is funny, at times it’s dark- reallly dark.... But this is the kind of book that makes me love the 1001 list because I would have never read it on my own
    • 2/5
      "Time, the human dimension, which makes us everything we are."'Time's Arrow' opens with the main character being dragged back from the brink of death by medics after a heart attack– and from then on he grows gradually ever more youthful until his eventual birth. As he grows younger, we learn that he was once a doctor who made his patients worse rather than better and has repeatedly changed his name as he moved West to New York from mainland Europe. It isn't long before we realise where he’s going (or coming from) – that he worked in the various camps across Poland where millions of people (mainly Jews) had been brought back to life and he had been a member of the Hitler Youth.The narrator exists inside the protagonist’s head and experiences everything he does, but is also separate from him. This allows the narrator to comment on events that he has had no power to influence, he doesn't know what is to come any more than the reader does. The use of the narrator allows the reader to consider the protagonists actions intellectually rather than emotionally.That is not to say that that this isn't an emotional read. The protagonist is a particularly dislikeable individual, before and after the war objectifying women and treating them with utter disdain, and one who reacts quite coldly to the death of his own daughter. But as you would expect, it is his wartime actions which is the real focus of this book and are the most difficult to comprehend. That events happen in reverse – bringing people to life rather than killing them – doesn't make them any less horrifying. We are reminded that these heinous acts weren't one off aberrations but instead played out over a number of years. The reverse timeline compels the reader to reassess events with which we think we are already familiar."Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal, only styles change."However, whilst part of me admires the creative way that the author has tackled such harrowing events I cannot help but think that he was just too clever and ultimately trivialised them. It soon becomes apparent that in the later life the protagonist feels no guilt about his previous deeds and that he has seemingly escaped censure for them which made uncomfortable reading. I cannot help but think that he had perhaps somehow turned a new leaf, had lived relatively innocently post-war, it might have magnified the horror of his wartime deeds, if that is possible, then I too would have felt differently. Something other than complete contempt. I suspect that this is yet another of those Marmite books, you will either love or hate it. For me it was an OK read but as with so many by the author that I've read a confusing and underwhelming one. It was at least thankfully brief.
    • 4/5
      While I strongly prefer his London Fields, I tend to think this might be my second favorite of his, though not nearly as good. Still, strong postmodern literature. Recommended.
    • 5/5
      A really trippy book. Amis was inspired by the scene in "Slaughterhouse-Five" that describes the bombing of Dresden in reverse, and decided to write the life of a Nazi war criminal backwards, starting as dying old man in a hospital bed, ending with birth. Darkly ironic and very poignant.
    • 3/5
      I had to drop a star. Bruised sleep revealed that I should not uphold my immediate image and adjust downwards. This situation was vivid in that I couldn't stop imaganing Amis in a smoking jacket writing about the Final Solution.

      - Anyway -

      A novel, a theme, that requires one to pass over it in silence. Marty refers to the Shoah as an autobahn to the reptilian mind. I tend to agree. Reading the dialogue in reverse was afeat. Language, sentences rather, are often so pailindromic.

    • 4/5
      The book starts with Tod T. Friendly dying as an old man, surrounded by doctors. But then his life starts to replay backwards, watched by what seems to be a spirit living in his mind who is unaware of what happened before/will happen next. To start with the watcher finds the reversed life 'counterintuitive, and faintly disgusting', but later/early in Tod's life he describes events as though it is natural for a man to be regurgitating food at each meal and for Nazis to be helping bloodied Jews up from the ground as the windows of their shops reassemble from fragments.Very interesting.
    • 3/5
      [book:Time's Arrow|23031] by [author:Martin Amis|11337] published 1991 is the story of Dr. Tod T. Friendly, living in the United States, who once worked in Auschwitz as a doctor. The story is told in reverse chronology and makes the mere 165 pages a very laborious read. No doubt Martin Amis is a skilled writer but this is not the first book written about a man's life lived backwards because there is Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The difference in this case, the man is old and dying and maybe his life is flashing backwards and it is told by the narrating soul of the man. It is all very confusing. I can't really say I enjoyed the story. I felt that there was inconsistencies and the plot, story board and turning points were difficult using reverse chronology. My rating is 3.43
    • 5/5
      A whole book running backwards. You would think it would tire you out, but Amis keeps hold of you from finish to start, never once relinquishing his hold, as the narrator's horrible beginnings slowly become clear.
    • 1/5
      A rather self indulgent novel. The story of a nazi war criminal told backwards, thus wiping the slate clean. Not sure it would encourage me to read any more of Martin Amis.
    • 3/5
      Tod Friendly dies in his garden in Massachusetts not far from the Alpha and Omega of highways, Route 6. He's not really Tod Friendly though because he is really John Young, but not for long as he changes his name several times before he is born. He dies a doctor and has been for many years, regardless of where or when he lived it all appears that he is a good doctor yet remember we're moving in the reverse so it all looks acceptable. The reader however knows where this is leading and mid century his career has taken him down a different path. At books conclusion, I'm disheartened. Aka Tod doesn't seem to comprehend what he has done and the punishment involved with it is never realized. If all our good seems bad and all our bad appears good, what does it all mean in the end. This arrow misses the target for me and leaves me befuddled.
    • 5/5
      At first I found the time moving backward sort of gimmicky, but then it became more interesting and thought provoking. It also made me slow down and ponder what I was reading. For example, a fat, dumpy druggie goes to the Vietnam war and comes back a clean-cut young man in good shape. Illustrates points that have been done countless times before in a novel way.
    • 5/5
      Mindbending...
    • 5/5
      Second reading. Just "brill," to use the Amis argot. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      I initially gave this book two stars, but after further thought I landed on three stars. The initial reaction was of extreme disappointment since the book started with so much potential. However, I think this story is a little better once you have time to let it all sink in--but not much better.Portraying this story from end to beginning was a clever trick which has been done by other authors more successfully. The narrator in this story is simply not the best vehicle for story progression (or regression). The narrator learns more as the story moves along while the main character loses experiences and unwinds--layer after layer.It's easy to know from the beginning what the secret is, and a lot of the excitement for me was to get past the big secret to see what led up to this awful point in time. Past the secret I expected the main character to be more human and somewhat more developed, which would contrast somewhat with the character's later revelations and trials.Even after reflecting on everything for a while after finishing, I still do not have any emotion towards the main character. Yes, he did awful things and ended life still having this as a part of him. There just isn't enough contrasting elements to make a better decision. The end of the story shows an very one-dimensional and shallow youth caught-up in the fervor of the times (somewhat) and there is no major transformation. Maybe the point was to unravel the character to a point of non-definition to show how complex we become over time as we add events and interactions to our lives. This thought made me add one star later.In regards to the narrator, I thought at first it was a non-judgmental observer which would simply tell the story as it was seen. However, very soon, the narrator knows English is being spoke backwards so it has to learn to flip the words around. I expected this much to happen so I didn't judge too harshly.However, my opinion of the narrator changed quickly when it was disgusted by the physical appearance of Irene later in her life. This reaction could only come from something human as to judge whether another person is physically attractive or not. The narrator expresses difficulty learning German, but backwards English was learned within a few pages.The dialog running backwards was necessary for conformity in the backwards-running time, but I found it annoying after a while as I had to read back through the dialog myself from end to beginning to compare the beginning to end.It's also hard to touch on the Holocaust without the book suddenly becoming about the Holocaust itself. If I maintain this story in review as a pure character study of one man's journey through life and not the events in his life, this is not a good journey. If I view the settings and events in addition to the character study, it's still not a good book.I do plan to re-read this book again at some future point. Hopefully I will pick-up more on a re-read and appreciate this book more.
    • 2/5
      Finished Time's Arrow by Martin Amis yesterday. Was COMPLETELY unimpressed. Ugh. In fact, I disliked it so much I didn't even bother to write an actual review. It was hard to follow, and generally uninteresting. I was not invested in the character and so I was not invested in the major pivotal plot point that I was waiting on and knew would occur early in his life and late in the book. The whole 'time told backward' narration device did NOT get any easier to keep up with, as I had hoped it would early on in the book. Dialogue was a pain especially. The only things that saved this book from a 'Hate' was that it was short, so the torture didn't last too long (although it still managed to drag) and I did enjoy the theme of hurting and healing.Still, I would not recommend this book.3/10 - Dislike
    • 2/5
      An entity -- a soul, perhaps? -- is born into the body of naturalized US citizen Tod Friendly at the moment the latter dies of old age, and watches Tod's life lived in reverse, from this moment of death all the way back to the moment, decades earlier, when as a tiny bawling baby he is stuffed back into his screaming mother. Along the way, we discover that Tod, under a different name, is a monster, a WWII war criminal living in the US under an assumed name: he has been one of the vile "physicians" working in Auschwitz under Mengele and, before that, with the Holocaust's major architect Christian Wirth. To the entity, however, these men and "Tod" himself aren't monsters at all but great benefactors, for do they not take shattered, mutilated men, women and children and, marvelously, render them whole?

      The telling of a tale in reverse chronology is an interesting literary conceit -- interesting in theory, anyway. In practice, it's a bit annoying and dull, which is why (so far as I know) only one other novel has been written this way: Counter-Clock World (1967) by Philip K. Dick; there may be good reason why this is one of the few Dick novels not to have been reissued over the past decade or so. (After the publication of Time's Arrow, Amis acknowledged borrowing the conceit from Dick; but he makes no mention of this in the book's Acknowledgments pages.) In the case of Time's Arrow, the thrill of seeing everyday actions being reinterpreted because done backwards wears off pretty fast, and once that happens there's not a whole lot left to be entranced by except watching how well or badly the author handles his self-imposed task. To Amis's credit, I noticed just one instance where his control of the chronology slipped (unless I'm mistaking the reference), where the narrating entity referred to something as being in the past when in fact it lay in the entity's future: p42, where the narrator's talking about a Japanese student in 1960s or 1970s America, and says, "He's lucky he wasn't here a few years ago, when we really hated the Japanese."

      I read the book around this time of its first publication and remember thinking that, just as the telling of the tale backwards was a somewhat meaningless stunt, so in fact was my reading it: I got to the end of it (it's quite a short book) but felt less as if I'd read a novel or been told a story, more as if I'd got to the far end of the tightrope without falling off, and so what? I had the same feeling this time round except that the book annoyed me quite a lot more -- not just through the affectation of the literary trick but also because applying it to a piece of human history so horrific as the Auschwitz seems to me to cheapen that misery and suffering, as if to say that human torment is just something to be witty about.

      Oh, yes, and it wasn't lost on me that "Tod" is the German for "death". Friendly Death. I'm not 100% sure what Amis meant to convey by that.
    • 4/5
      This book starts out with the main character dying. The big twist is that he then lives his life backwards. Since it is the same life, he doesn't get to make any decisions, but instead observe his own life. What an interesting story! How would we judge our own lives if we lived them in reverse?
    • 4/5
      The kind of book that bothers some people because the author's efforts are so constant and obvious, but wonderful. I still marvel at Amis's ability to write an entire novel backwards. But I also appreciate his ability to keep the book manageable. It's a book you need to learn to read and once you "get" the language, you don't want to stop. Brilliant.

      ***
      Added: I recently re-read this book and it didn't hook itself into my brain like the last times. I'm not sure if I've gotten past the ideas and can't really appreciate it for anything else (the style and ideas are fantastic, but once those have been absorbed, there's not much else).
    • 1/5
      This may sound ridiculous, but the book narrator is downright unrealistic. The fact that the narrator never realizes what is happening (i.e. time is going backwards) made it impossible for me to enjoy this book. It was short so I finished it but I could not stand the narrator. I understand Amis was using the narrator as a vehicle to tell the story backwards, but the narrator (from the beginning) has an established perspective of the world. He knows what doctors are, he knows general concepts like conversation etc.. The only way for the narrator to know these things (from the beginning) is if he were to have already lived life forwards. So why does he never pick up on life flowing backwards? Additionally the author spent time "learning" backwards English, but understood backwards German immediately... really?Also the writing style is pretentious.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting and engaging book. As you learn within the first few pages, time runs backward in this novel. I found the reversal of time really drew me into the story. Reading this book is similar to solving a puzzle, you have to remember clues to make connections because you get the effects of something before it actually happens, which I thought was one of the best parts about reading it.
    • 3/5
      I confess that I read this book quite a while ago (probably 10+ years ago), so the details are a little hazy. But the idea of the book stayed with me after all this time--so it must have made an impression on me (and books that make an impression or worth reading!). I remembered that I liked the book because the author chose to tell a life story backwards--starting at the end and moving toward birth. I remember being intrigued by this idea so I bought it. When preparing to write this little description, I went to Amazon.com to refresh my memory on the details and then it started coming back to me bit by bit. The person whose story the author choose to tell is a Nazi. Obviously, this is not just any old character and life, but one charged with significance and loaded with provocation. Because I don't think I could accurately write the description of how the book works, I'm borrowing the quick description from the Amazon.com review: "He puts two separate consciousnesses into the person of one man, ex-Nazi doctor Tod T. Friendly. One identity wakes at the moment of Friendly's death and runs backwards in time, like a movie played in reverse, (e.g., factory smokestacks scrub the air clean,) unaware of the terrible past he approaches. The "normal" consciousness runs in time's regular direction, fleeing his ignominious history." I remember being filled with dread and anticipation of how the one identity was going to confront the truth of his past. It is a thought-provoking read and, again, does an interesting job of playing with time.
    • 5/5
      The only work of fiction by which I've ever been physically disoriented by reading. I was so enveloped in the method that I'd get up to get a glass of water, and I'd have to stop and think to make sure I was taking the steps in the right order. Of course, this would just be gimmickry by someone not as brilliant as Amis - here the effect is the perfect device by which to tell the story.
    • 5/5
      Startling work about the life of a Nazi doctor from a Holocaust death camp as seen by an independent intelligence within him that experiences the doctor's life and surroundings moving backwards through time. Brilliant examination of what may have been the doctor's thoughts and feelings at various points in his life as deciphered by the backwards moving intelligence within him. Some of the scenes that will stay with me include the 'uniting' of the Jewish families (as seen by the intelligence within the doctor) in which Jewish husbands, wives, and children transitioned from anguished despair at their separation to clinging to one another. Extremely highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      I am not a fan of science fiction but I really enjoyed this book!
    • 3/5
      ultimately - bad taste
    • 4/5
      ***SPOILERS***Is it possible to write about one of the worst atrocities perpetuated on humanity - focusing on the worst aspects of that atrocity - from the point of view of a participant? One would expect this to become a morose, gruesome endeavour, doomed to morphing into a litany of abuses.But what if you told the story backwards? Start at the end of an old man's life, work backwards to the atrocities and to even earlier times.This is the premise Martin Amis brilliantly pulls off here, with full command of the language and a technical performance worthy of envy. Conversations are related backwards. Aging happens backwards. The simple act of hailing a taxi becomes a serio-comic execise in parody - the taxi is waiting for you when you come out of the restaurant, it knows where to take you, just before you get out you tell it where you have just come from, when you get out you are so appreciative of the service you stand there waving at all of the taxis for a while. Touches like this elevate what could have been a stylistic exercise in wankery to a level of art rarely reached in fiction.
    • 3/5
      This is the first book I've read by Martin Amis, and I found it to be self-consciously clever and frankly pretentious. It's impressive that Amis could write a story backwards, but that doesn't make it a good book. On the whole I found this generally irritating.
    • 4/5
      As the impact of the holocaust recedes out of living memory forever, Amis renders the event anew. The narrator is an intelligent passenger inside the head of a man as his life unfolds in reverse. The narrator is intelligent, though his conclusions are based upon a world where letters first spring from fire and then are read, and where life is mended with the knife’s edge. As a result, the narrator’s perspective on events are innocent and pure like a child’s. The effect is [hopefully] to re-awaken the world so they do not forget.With highly praised films such as Life Is Beautiful portraying the holocaust as a Disney World, works like this one by Amis are increasingly more important.Aside from the obvious subject which isn’t overtly revealed until the last quarter of the book, this little post-modern narrative experiment also reveals much more about the human condition where chess boards are painstakingly organized from chaos, the participant celebrate their work with a handshake, and the world moves towards a green promised land. A land that is known to exist, and it is only a matter of time before it is reached.