Best 1981 Adventures (7)
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December 7, 2016
One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1981 adventure novels. Happy 35th anniversary!
Martin Amis’s metafictional adventure Other People.
Waking in a hospital, a beautiful young woman has no memory of who she is – and no idea how to make sense of anything around her. Taking the name Mary, she becomes homeless; she is a guileless child, amazed and terrified by aspects of everyday London that other people take for granted. A policeman, named Prince, appears to recognize her — he sends her a newspaper clipping which suggests that her real name is Amy, and that she was into some dark stuff. Mary continues to try and survive — though the men she meets invariably want just one thing from her. (Sartre’s “Hell is other people” is literally true, for Mary.) She also learns, from Prince, that Amy had asked someone to kill her — and that it was the failed killing that caused her amnesia. Will the killer reappear? Is he waiting for Mary to become Amy again, before finally honoring Amy’s request?
Fun fact: The first novel of Amis’s after he committed to being a full-time writer; and the first of his novels in which the author intervenes in the narrative voice.
Let me know if I’ve missed any 1981 adventures that you particularly admire.