![]() Still, there’s no denying that “Time’s Arrow” is a playful book. It “makes strange” historical events that have been recited often, bringing us right up against them suddenly from new and unexpected angles, and shocking us at the very sight and thought of them, all over again. ![]() Ultimately the book’s playfulness, its teasing quality, actually amplifies the emotional impact. The slippery concept may be hard to get a handle on intellectually, but intuitively and emotionally it works like a charm. ![]() It might be possible to dismiss this bold novel with strategic applications of sarcasm or moral dudgeon-overlooking the small point that Amis’ radical structural ploy is no self-indulgent literary gimmick. ![]() Or is “opens” quite the right word? The other salient feature of the novel is that its narrative travels backward in time: “One thing led to another-actually it was more like the other way around.” We begin at the tag end of Tod’s existence and finish up with the commencement, as the guy is about to be reborn-or un-born or de-birthed, or whatever you want to call it. The central character is a former Nazi doctor from Auschwitz, now known as Tod Friendly (Tod meaning death in German), who is hiding out in the suburbs as the story opens. The splendid, slender new Martin Amis novel “Time’s Arrow” is bound to become controversial at some point. ![]()
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