Rating: 
Summary: Dissection of our need for violence and pornography
Review: As usual in an Amis novel the wordplay is sparkling. Yellow Dog examines in a bizarrely comic plot the way violence and pornography permeate our "sophisticated" culture, how these primitive phenomena percolate through our high-tech, media-saturated world. The horrible reviews this book has received are inexplicable except perhaps by jealousy or an exaggerated response to regression to the (very exalted) mean.
Rating: 
Summary: Heavy-Handed Satire of Porn, Sexual Relations and Pretension
Review: Do you ever feel like you cannot escape someone trying to sell you unwanted pornography, sexual aids, "dating services", information about "celebrities" and ridiculous ideas for your married life? Do you ever feel like those around you are posing to make themselves more pretentious? If you answered "yes" to any of these dimensions, you will appreciate Martin Amis' latest book, Yellow Dog. Like a dog who cannot escape a coupling with another dog, Mr. Amis sees our society as caught in a trap involving sexual relations of our own making . . . that is ruining our lives. In Yellow Dog, he devises several interrelated stories to convey his harsh criticism of what passes for our "common culture" today. One involves a former actor, Xan Meo, turned writer who is brain-damaged by thugs when a criminal is offended by what Meo has written. In another, a fictional king of England struggles with illicit photographs of his daughter that should not be seen in public. A sex-obsessed "journalist" creates the type of tabloid stories and photographs that sell, but won't uplift literacy while dealing with an empty personal life. The remains of a loved one create a special type of havoc in the air while the Earth braces for a hoped-for "near-miss" with a comet. In the middle of these stories, the characters find that their pursuit of what others want for them leads them away from their own fundamentally good natures. Edgy humor develops as they confront their temptations and inner-most desires. Give in to those temptations and bad things can indeed happen to good people. The temptations are developed in pretty raw ways, involving such seldom discussed topics as incest, perverse sexual relations, excessive exhibitionism, and abusive uses of power. If you are easily offended in these subject areas, look for a different book to read. The stories remind me of the sort of satire that Voltaire used in Candide. The situations are overdrawn deliberately to rub your face in the point Mr. Amis wants to make. I found them redeeming in one quality, though. He describes a sort of synchronicity that seems to suggest that nature will take its course and eventually clean out the muck in our lives . . . as long as we don't deliberately drown ourselves in the muck first. Several parts of the book are very funny, especially the on-line exploits of Clint Smoker, the tabloid "journalist" and the ironic last trip of Royce Traynor. Several parts are sad, as men struggle to do the right thing with their wives and daughters. I graded the book down primarily because I didn't find myself relating very directly to any of the characters except the king and his daughter. The rest just seemed like comic book characters to me. After you read this book, I suggest that you read something tranquil and spiritual . . . to help remove the muck from your life.
Rating:
Summary: Heavy-Handed Satire of Porn, Sexual Relations and Pretension
Review: Do you ever feel like you cannot escape someone trying to sell you unwanted pornography, sexual aids, "dating services", information about "celebrities" and ridiculous ideas for your married life? Do you ever feel like those around you are posing to make themselves more pretentious? If you answered "yes" to any of these dimensions, you will appreciate Martin Amis' latest book, Yellow Dog. Like a dog who cannot escape a coupling with another dog, Mr. Amis sees our society as caught in a trap involving sexual relations of our own making . . . that is ruining our lives. In Yellow Dog, he devises several interrelated stories to convey his harsh criticism of what passes for our "common culture" today. One involves a former actor, Xan Meo, turned writer who is brain-damaged by thugs when a criminal is offended by what Meo has written. In another, a fictional king of England struggles with illicit photographs of his daughter that should not be seen in public. A sex-obsessed "journalist" creates the type of tabloid stories and photographs that sell, but won't uplift literacy while dealing with an empty personal life. The remains of a loved one create a special type of havoc in the air while the Earth braces for a hoped-for "near-miss" with a comet. In the middle of these stories, the characters find that their pursuit of what others want for them leads them away from their own fundamentally good natures. Edgy humor develops as they confront their temptations and inner-most desires. Give in to those temptations and bad things can indeed happen to good people. The temptations are developed in pretty raw ways, involving such seldom discussed topics as incest, perverse sexual relations, excessive exhibitionism, and abusive uses of power. If you are easily offended in these subject areas, look for a different book to read. The stories remind me of the sort of satire that Voltaire used in Candide. The situations are overdrawn deliberately to rub your face in the point Mr. Amis wants to make. I found them redeeming in one quality, though. He describes a sort of synchronicity that seems to suggest that nature will take its course and eventually clean out the muck in our lives . . . as long as we don't deliberately drown ourselves in the muck first. Several parts of the book are very funny, especially the on-line exploits of Clint Smoker, the tabloid "journalist" and the ironic last trip of Royce Traynor. Several parts are sad, as men struggle to do the right thing with their wives and daughters. I graded the book down primarily because I didn't find myself relating very directly to any of the characters except the king and his daughter. The rest just seemed like comic book characters to me. After you read this book, I suggest that you read something tranquil and spiritual . . . to help remove the muck from your life.
Rating: 
Summary: You either get it or you don't...
Review: Even at his worst, Martin Amis outshines 95% of his contemporaries. This book had me at times laughing out loud, amazed by the wordplay and clever wit, transfixed by the plot, and touched by the understanding of humanity. There are passages to be read and re-read; quoted to a friend or contemplated in solitude. There are uncomfortable truths revealed, as Amis refuses to turn a blind eye towards human nature, however ugly it may be. For those who complain that Yellow Dog is "too confusing," I suggest re-reading those passages which take you off your mark. I admittedly did this several times, and the pay-off for slowly re-reading a potentially non-linear thought pattern proved infinitely more rewarding than sluffing through the typical banality filling most fiction shelves today. For those who critize Yellow Dog as being "too clever," I can only say that I prefer intelligent clever writing to the boring alternative. Too clever? That's a bit like complaining your dinner was "too delicious." If you believe in surrounding yourself with people who are more intelligent than you may be (as I certainly do), you will love spending a few days with Mr. Amis and his Yellow Dog.
Rating: 
Summary: One of Amis's Weakest Works
Review: I am a fan of Martin Amis, and was greatly looking forward to this book, but _Yellow Dog_ is a disappointment. There are clever bits that charm. For example, I loved this bit: "the U Hotel belonged to a chain whose owner had earned 78 billion dollars for realising that w was the only non-monosyllable in the English alphabet. Scrapping the supposed abbreviation, which had human beings gabbling out nine syllables, and replacing it with three other syllables chosen at random...would save global businesstime half a decade per day..." (287). It's these kinds of observations about every day life that make Amis the clever writer he is. _Yellow Dog_ as a whole is a mess, though, and not a terribly interesting mess. There is the main plot of Xan Meo, who sustained a head injury in an episode of male violence. There is the story of Clint Smoker, the dismally endowed writer for a smutty tabloid, and his internet flirtation with someone who turns out not to be exactly like what she says she is (shocking, I know!) There is a sub-plot about a fictitious British royal family facing a scandal, which was kind of fun, but also rather simplistic. There is a porn industry sub-plot, in which it turns out that the porn industry has as much jargon as any other field. (That was kind of funny.) Then there is a sub-plot having to do with an airplane in distress that is entirely unconnected to the rest of the novel and somewhat derivative of Don DeLillo's _White Noise_ which did nothing for me. Here are the biggest problems with the book, as I see it:
1) Sometimes it feels like Amis is trying really, really hard to be shocking and unpleasant. The effort is too visible, and yes, it is unpleasant and improbable to read about a woman deliberately trying to lure a man to commit incest with his 4-year-old. I understand that Amis is engaged in caricature (I loved Nicola Six in _London Fields_, the vampy, overdrawn femme fatale), but Karla White in this novel doesn't work.
2) The structure is annoying: new sub-plots are still being introduced more than halfway through the novel, the airline plot is just THERE, as if Amis had it lying around and thought "Hey! I'll toss it into this novel!"
3) The satiric targets are too obvious.
4) There are no characters who really capture the imagination the way the best Martin Amis novels do: no lowlife, darts-and-porn-obsessed Keith Talent, no idealistic and naive Guy Clinch, no loserish, envious Richard Tull, no smarmy and self-satisfied Gwyn Barry.
5) Almost everyone in the book, to one degree or another, talks like an Oxford graduate. Why? Martin Amis is a great novelist, but this novel fails to deliver. If this is your first time reading Amis, I recommend you try _London Fields_, _The Information_, or _Time's Arrow_ instead.
Rating:
Summary: Pretentious and Too self-involved.
Review: I am not quite sure if there is a plot in this novel. It is a preachy novel about pornography and journalism. Xan Meo is more like an idealogy than a three-dimensional character. There is a sense of superficial intelligensia. The novel meanders with Xan Meo's [complaining] practically about everything. Smoker the journalism is a much more interesting character, but then again, Amis has to inject his snobberish intellectulism -- philosophizing everything.
What is this novel about? A waste of my [money].
Rating:
Summary: a cultural artifact of the 21st Century
Review: I have to admit that I liked this novel though I had trouble decoding and following the narrative. Possibly for that very reason, this book did not touch me emotionally, the way that a book from say, the late Walker Percy might. I did not like at all the storyline involving the Royals, but the threads following Xan Meo, Clint Smoker and Royce Traynor made the book for me. I am at a loss, however, as to how or whether those threads come together as a whole. (...)
Rating: 
Summary: Yuck.
Review: I haven't got fifty pages into this book (honestly I can't say that I will finish it) and I feel like I have wasted so much time already that I wanted to come to Amazon and warn potential readers not to do the same. "Incoherent" doesn't even begin to describe this choppy, strung-out prose. One of these reviews mentions emmulating William Burroughs- newsflash: Burroughs was barely swallowable the first time around; to imitate him is to ensure that you will go down in literary history (if you're lucky) as the author whose major influence was William Burroughs. I read somewhere else on here that we readers should "lighten up"- that this is Martin Amis, so of course he is making a parody of modern novels. Another newsflash: the "parody" defense is a last, desperate resort and if Amis himself is using it, you know that he knows he messed up. If you are going to waste that much of your creative ability and precious time making a -parody- of something, you need to find a day job. Any point Amis was trying to make could've been made in a nice little article in a major periodical and he could've been paid for it what he should've been paid. _Torrents of Spring_ this books is not. I do not recommend it at all to anyone, especially if the reader was a fan of Amis's beforehand.
Rating:
Summary: Some good, more bad.
Review: I just read an old Beatles interview where the Beatles themselves said when they weren't sure of a song's appeal, they would throw in a lot chords, figuring they'd dazzle the listener with the chord changes, while hiding the questionable tune itself. I had that feeling about this book, that when Amis is telling the sections of the story that are founded on a solid narrative, he writes straight and lucidly. When the narrative isn't of such sure footing, he tries to dazzle and distract the reader with oblique, recherché word play. I prefer clarity and a good story.
Rating:
Summary: Much Brilliant Writing, Some Vintage Characterization
Review: I really am not sure what to make of Martin Amis's YELLOW DOG. Before I started the book, I was sure I'd love it and there is a lot of "Martin Amis at his best" in this book. The pacing is good and Amis's sardonic wit abounds, but the book is odd and peopled with characters it's almost impossible to like (nothing new there, for Amis). Also, there are three different narratives in the book, and, while I usually love books with intertwining narratives, the three in YELLOW DOG didn't seem to come together like they should have. One of the narratives concerns Xan Meo, actor, writer and loving husband and father who is hit over the head one day when exiting a bar in Camden. The attack, perpetrated by an assailant named Mal, was not accidental and we learn, later in the novel, why. The result of Xan's injuries form the core of YELLOW DOG and it's not a pretty or, surprisingly, even a funny, core. Xan's story was ultimately very sad and very brutal and some of Amis's best writing (writing that is not funny) concerns the encounters between the injured Xan and his daughter, Billie. The other two narratives are hilarious, however. One is a satirical look at the "Royal Family," the other a send up of the yellow press that often borders on farce. The Royal Family that Amis has constructed for YELLOW DOG isn't today's Royal Family, but one that seems, somehow, to be set in the not-too-distant future (the present king in YELLOW DOG is King Henry IX). Some of the satire of Henry IX and his Chinese mistress is priceless, but there was also a lot of it I simply didn't get and even more that was just plain silly. The satire centering on photographs of the future queen, Princess Victoria, in her bath, intertwined with the one centering around a journalist at the "Morning Lark," Clint Smoker. Anyone who has read Amis before will recognize Smoker as bad boy "vintage Amis." He's not at all likable, but it is his story that I found the easiest to follow. Smoker is much more concerned with pursuing his own e-romances than he is in getting any news written, yellow or not. I found Smoker's email with k8 very difficult to read, since it's filled with all sorts or text abbreviations, something I'm really not familiar with. However, when you finally meet k8, you'll know why Amis chose to include the texting. There is another strand in this book that concerns a West coast criminal named Joseph Andrews, and yet another that revolves around a comet on a collision course with earth and yet another concerning an aircraft that was destroyed in flight by a coffin. While a lot of this is very good, a lot of it also feels like a bit "too much," sort of like literary overkill. Amis is well-known for writing highly structured novels, but I didn't care for the structure in YELLOW DOG. It is written in three parts that each have their own chapters and subchapters. If this weren't bad enough, just when we get comfortable with a character, he disappears, only to reappear later, when we least expect him. This may seem like it's funny, but it wasn't to me. It created quite a strange, choppy effect. If anyone but Martin Amis had written this novel, it would probably be either a one star disaster or a five star treat. I couldn't decide how many stars to give it but I finally decided to award the book four stars because it simply isn't Amis's best. It contains much brilliant writing, some vintage Amis characterization, but the narratives aren't really as coherent as they should be. Still, any book written by Martin Amis, even if not his best, is going to far, far better than most of the junk you'll find on the bestseller lists. Recommended only for hardcore Amis fans and people who want something very different and "edgy."
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