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Names are funny in London Fields: baby Marmaduke, sister-in-law Lizzyboo and a housemaid known as Auxiliadora. Hope, of course, is precisely what London Fields is not about. Despite his dead-on dialogue and purgative humor, Amis has righteous blood in his eye. Talent, Six and Clinch are signs of our times, of "mass disorientation and anxiety," of "mortifying squalor" and "impenetrable mendacity." Talent is monstrously indifferent, Six (pronounced sex by the Black Cross regulars) is devoid of passion, and Clinch has no grip on reality.
In a prefatory note, Amis says he toyed with the idea of calling his book The Murderee. The coinage describes the dark lady of the novel, whose self- arranged annihilation strongly suggests one of the author's recurrent themes: the nuclear and toxic capacities of industrial nations to destroy life on earth. "Hard to love, when you're bracing yourself for impact" is the succinct way the narrator of London Fields puts this modern predicament. But not hard to laugh when slouching toward the millennium with Amis.