My first taste of a Martin Amis novel and one that has been a hit with the critics but not with th fans it seems. I’ll certainly say this for Amis; he’s original in his writing.

There doesn’t seem to be any set convention for the way the book is structured, feeling like different events and almost like mini-stories all put together on one book. The core story is of a man named Xan, who reverts to primitive male instincts after being attacked by thugs in a bar. The story of a dead corpse that wishes to take vengenance upon his wife for smoking cigarettes behind his back for 40 years by crashing a plane.

Amonst this is a tale about a new hack who laps up the sensationlist news for their readers, who are collectively known as wankers, while courting a female reader via SMS and Email who seems not to be able to communicate in English in any readable form, other than shorthand computer text. Finally there’s the story of The Royal Family and a video that will shatter the monarchy involving the monarch’s daughter involved in a compromising position.

All this is seems banded together with a lot of bandaging and sellotape. It doesn’t really fit together as such, with only a few of the stories properly linking. What probably threw me off and bored me was the supposed satire of The Royal Family. It just seemed to try too hard to be funny, with the language being almost incomprehensible, perhaps to prove a point about the monarchy, or simply because it was badly written.

Xao’s story is not that interesting either. You don’t really know much about Xao and because of this, you’re not particularly bothered about what has happened to him or what he does. There are moments of incestuous suggestion and the dialogue of accepting incest as a natural desire. Of course it’s part of the story and before you go up in arms about how sick it is, it’s done in context. But it’s not very interesting as I state, just seems to meander nowhere in particular.

I wasn’t too fond of the over use of cliches and stereotypical characters such as the East End gangsters. I thought we had moved on from that, but perhaps not in this case

The better part of the book is Clint Smoker’s escapade as a hack and his humourous communications with a girl who seems just far too good to be true. The way they describe their readers, the content they provide and the pranks the paper pulls are just fantastic. It’s an accurate exaggeration of the sensationlist bullshit the newspapers in this country produce, where scrutiny and journalism are thrown out in favour of what the general populace wants and needs: gossip and garbage.

I wasn’t too fond of the over use of cliches and stereotypical characters such as the East End gangsters. I thought we had moved on from that, but perhaps not in this case. The interweaving of a malicious revenge involving Xan’s niece, wife and ex-wife is very elaborate and well woven into the story. Even then, I felt a little bored by some of the dialogue that takes place between the characters.

For the most part, I think I enjoyed Yellow Dog, even if I didn’t get wholly understand it or follow it. It all ties intogether nicely at the end with some coherence, and it improves as it ends. I wish the book followed more of the cohesive structure and language of the last few chapters, and offered more background about the characters at the beginning. This probably would have engaged me more with the characters, as we learn about Xan’s past and the history of his growing up and how it relates to the attack that took place, inaddition to the plot to ruin his life.

It doesn’t really fit together as such, with only a few of the stories properly linking

There are moments are brilliance with the way Amis handles certain topics of sensitivity, the depth to which he goes and the way he delivers it is really impressive. But this, again, is let down by post moments of boredome and dire conversation which add little to the proceedings.

I’m not giving up on Amis yet, and will certainly be reading some of his other titles as his writing has an originality and a vibrance to it. Yellow Dog is not all that great and certainly had the potential to be better had the story and characters had more depth, which it lacked severly.

Verdict: Not good, not awful. Promising ideas executed with lethargy.