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Monday May 17th, 2010

An Unwelcome Telegram

In his review of Martin Amis’ new novel for this site, John Davidson wrote, “Amis may be in the process of becoming our foremost contemporary chronicler of what it is to grow old.” From a recent interview with Amis in the Globe & Mail:

Amis turned 60 last summer. So how was it – balloons, bubbly, joyous celebrations? He levels a gaze that is only tepidly amused. “It was … not great.” When he recently became a grandfather – he has two grown sons from a previous marriage and an adult daughter – “it was like a telegram from the mortuary.”

In the same piece, we also learn this: “Unusually, for him, [Amis] has already completed his next novel, a satire about modern England in which a young thug wins £100-million in the lottery.”