Synopses & Reviews
The year is 1970, and it’s a long, hot summer. In a castle on a mountainside in Italy, half a dozen young lives are afloat on a sea of change, trapped inside the history of the sexual revolution. The girls are acting like boys, the boys are going on acting like boys, and Keith Nearing—twenty years old, a literature student all clogged up with the English novel—is struggling to twist feminism and women’s ascendency toward his own ends.
As revolutions go, this one might have been nonviolent, but it wasn’t bloodless—and now, in the twenty-first century, the events of 1970 and their repercussions are finally catching up with Keith Nearing.
The Pregnant Widow is a comedy of manners and a nightmare, with all the confused vigor of youth and the bittersweet and sometimes simply bitter—wisdom of age and experience. Brilliant, haunting, and gloriously risqué, it is Martin 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 Keiths 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.
Synopsis
In a castle on a mountainside in Italy, half a dozen young lives are afloat on a sea of change, trapped inside the history of the 1970's sexual revolution. Amis offers a comedy of manners and a nightmare, with all the confused vigor of youth and the bittersweet, and sometimes simply bitter, wisdom of age and experience.
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.