Other People - Martin Amis

Other People a novel by Martin Amis is a haunting, probing and dark "metaphysical" thriller as critics calls it.

 

The book opens with a confession by the mysterious narrator
"I didn't want to have to do it to her. I would have infinitely preferred some other solution, still there we are"

Then it is followed by Mary Lamb leaving a hospital and getting lost wandering around London, as Mary struggles to locate past memories. She had difficulty remembering things like nouns, common terms, the names of familiar objects. The whole world is a riddle for her. Thus a newspaper is a 'dirty sheath of smudged gray paper that came and went every day'.

The story is then commented here and there by a second mysterious narrator who may very well be someone who holds the key to unlocking Mary Lamb's past.

As Mary walks barefoot in the streets of London she meets different characters that represent the shabby London society and at the same time leaving a trail of destruction behind ( Trev and Jock attacking her, as she was also at the same time sees sex as a strange practice she cannot get the hang of ) and a couple of obsessed men who truly looked out for her, but without a memory the notion of love still lingers past Mary ( Alan and Russ ) and the eventual tragedy that befell Alan.

The entire book can be seen as a living through or a living back of her life at or after the moment of her supposed to be death at the hands of her lover.

As Mary slowly by surely regains snapshot of previous memories, the very existence of a certain cop who calls himself Mr. Prince becomes more puzzling to her.

Mr. Prince is the first person to confront her that she may be Amy Hide not Mary Lamb. The reader then became more engulf in the mystery. Is Mary Lamb the innocent Dr Jekyll figure of this novel, and Amy, as her Mr Hyde?

The more Mr. Prince gives Mary the clues the more you will wonder what kind of a dark past that Mary as Amy Hide has?

Things just go more interesting from here on...

And then ""She had torn through the glass and come back from the other side. She had found her again. She was herself at last"

Mary Lamb is now Amy Hide. And the chilling conclusion where Mr. Prince will once again try to finish the undone task. Which in his own words " I didn't want to have to do it to her. I would have infinitely preferred some other solution".

The last part of the book closes with a 16 year old Amy Hide finding herself back home just prior to meeting her demon-lover.


A great read indeed !!!!.....