Read: House of Meetings
Martin Amis’s latest novel takes place (mostly) in a Russian labor camp and is suitably dark and dismal. Written as a confessional, the narrator recounts to his daughter his life prior to, during, and after his imprisonment in the labor camp. Most of the story revolves around his relationship with his brother, who married the woman that he (the narrator) had designs on but with whom nothing romantic ever transpired despite his best efforts. At the end of the novel (and the narrator’s life), we find out that he was actually queer for his brother, acting out his male homosocial desire across the body of a woman in a classic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwickian love triangle. Vintage twisted Amis, but without the humor.
