I finished Time's Arrow on Monday, and while I'm not sure I necessarily liked it, it's still an interesting read. In some parts, I felt Martin Amis got a little too literary, just to be literary, in the tradition of hip young novelists like the recently departed David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Safran Foer. All I ask of a book is that it be straightforward, you know? I hate when writers clown around. So that was my one issue with Time's Arrow. If the last page was supposed to hit me over the head with some grand meaning, it missed.On the other hand, the premise of Time's Arrow was fascinating. At the moment of Tod T. Friendly's death, a soul is reborn. Friendly carries it inside him, unknowningly, and they start traveling backwards through his life. He starts out as the old retiree tending his garden, gets younger and becomes a doctor, gets even younger and goes back to his native Germany where he works at Auschwitz. The soul doesn't understand how life works, so to him, a lot of things seem terribly confusing; but also, more importantly, destruction looks like healing and healing looks like destruction. I thought Amis did a superb job at sticking with the conceit, writing everything backwards, even conversations. But what was so weird, and genius, is that once you accept the conceit, it was amazing how many of the situations played just as well, whether you read them from the top or the bottom. Which just says that life is absurd.
The book also at times made me crazy. Literally made me feel crazy because I couldn't remember which direction things should go, since they made sense both ways. I'd have to stop and think about it.
So overall, thumbs up. Now I need to go read The Curious Case of Benjamin Button...but right after I'm done with Eclipse! :)
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