Rating: 
Summary: Not Mart's Usual Great Stuff
Review: I really like the characters of Martin Amis, provided their core is real. Yet, once in a while, his characters veer off into deep satire, where they primarily make political or social points, or exist only as crazed caricatures. Then, his characters don't really resonate, at least with me. Alas, this was the case for some of 'Yellow Dog', where Xan Meo (a perfect husband with a brain injury), the King of England, and Clint Smoker (a tabloid journalist) inhabit three separate satirical worlds that come together in an incredible intersection of crime, royalty, and pornography. Fortunately, Amis does give his characters their moments of humanity, particularly in the last half of the book, although Clint Smoker seems real to me only as he flees from his chat-room girlfriend. Mart certainly knows the tab guys better than me so he's probably right. Maybe they're not human. Nonetheless, Amis does see the need to push Xan Meo out of his family, where his effort to regain himself after injury is quite touching, and into a pornographic movie scene, where Mart's content totally eluded me. Here Amis, a truly funny and interesting writer, was actually a little boring. I've read many Martin Amis novels and I've always found them to be carefully crafted (and usually hilarious). Yet, the craft in 'Yellow Dog' wasn't quite there. So, I wonder: Did Amis take a chance with this novel and follow the practice of his friend Saul Bellow, who dictated his later books?
Rating: 
Summary: Come back, Martin Amis!
Review: I wait for Amis' books like I would the Second Coming, and I'm usually not left wanting. Unfortunately this was not my experience with YELLOW DOG. I felt at times he was trying to emulate Burroughs' cut-and-paste technique with the plot, but I didn't empathize enough with the characters to want to go back and retrace my steps. Yes, there's some diamond-sharp prose in this book, but it doesn't hang together. Where's the brilliance of LONDON FIELDS? The belly laughs of THE INFORMATION? Sorry, Martin, but you lost me on this one.
Rating:
Summary: A good book, but not up to Amis' standard
Review: I'm a full on Amis worshipper, but this book might be my least favorite . There are the usual language theatrics, and that's not to diminish them; when Amis gets a head of steam there's nobody writing in English who can run with him. Still, for the first time ever reading an Amis book I hurried through the ending just to get it over with. The book could just as well be subtitled "Martin Does Porn" because all of the story lines are in some way about prurient interest. Three of the characters spend at least some time actively in the porn business, while the pornography of violence and internet salaciousness are all over the place. Of course there are insightful moments and great humor, the descriptions from the point of view of a recently brain injured Xan Meo are fabulous and the autobiography of English gangster Joseph Andrews is a collection of numbingly repetitive violence and imprisonment that somehow manages to be incredibly funny at the same time. Still, the character Amis seems to inhabit the best is Clint Smoker, writer for a London based tabloid named the Morning Lark. Amis geeks will remember the Lark from London Fields, where darts obsessed Keith Talent (one of the more brilliant characters in recent literature) kept a copy tucked under his arm for most of the book. In Smoker Amis comes closest to his great characters. Smoker is sexually insecure, socially awkward, wordy, and disturbing, and Amis seems most at ease and in best form while shuttling him about. He also saves some of his most exquisite writing for Smoker; the Lark op-ed about the princess Victoria losing her virginity (it's hinted to her father) is twisted brilliance. Still, the various story lines never quite coalesce, and the book concludes with "family values" message that seems almost trite considering all of the blood and sex that leads to it. Yellow Dog isn't a bad book, but Amis made the mistake of setting the bar so high for himself. From nearly any other novelist this book would be a breakthrough, but from Amis it's quite average. Read it if you've already read everything else, but if you're getting to know him try London Fields of The Information first and read Yellow Dog when it's in paperback.
Rating: 
Summary: good
Review: If I'd never read another Martin Amis book, I would have thought this book was absolutely amazing. I'm reviewing it in relation to all other novels and not all other Amis novels -- therefore, it deserves 5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed it, it made me laugh, it was great. It was better than Night Train (read like a contractual obligation), and Time's Arrow (a clever conceit, but worth a book? really?) and Other People (I just don't get this one). If you haven't read The Information, buy it and read it twice immediately.
Rating:
Summary: "Flesh with the rubbery look of pasta."
Review: In the Martin Amis novel, "Yellow Dog", Xan Meo is savagely attacked by two men, and as a result, Meo suffers from a head injury. Clint Smoker--a journalist at the tabloid newspaper the Morning Lark receives a tip about the beating from his drug pusher, Andrew New. Smoker usually spends his days creating fake erotic letters purporting to be from readers, so he is only mildly interested in the tip about the beating. In fact, Clint is much more interested in his new internet relationship, but soon Clint is more involved with the Meo beating than he ever imagined. "Yellow Dog" is full of odd characters--most of them are unpleasant and uninteresting. There's a king who maintains a mistress in Paris while he frets about the circulation of some rather naughty photographs of his daughter. There's a 'homeless' man who lives with his mother, and there's Brendan Urquhart-Gordon--the king's henchman. The most interesting and best-developed character is the physically unappealing, Clint Smoker--he sports a tattoo of a noose around his neck and has a tiny pair of handcuffs hanging through his nose. The descriptions of the Morning Lark offices and Smoker's disgusting home were priceless and pure Amis at his naughty boy best. I rarely buy hardbacks and usually wait for coveted new titles to appear in paperback, but I broke my usual behaviour and bought "Yellow Dog" soon after it was published. In 2003, I discovered Martin Amis and read "Money" and "Success" rapidly. Both were excellent books, and "Money" is one of the best modern novels I've read. So when I heard that Martin Amis had a new book out, I could hardly wait to get my hands on it. Unfortunately, "Yellow Dog" is a big disappointment. Imagine the elements of a Westlake mystery meeting the intellect of Julian Barnes--toss in a liberal dose of cynicism and bleak sarcasm, and there you have it--a literary version of a Guy Ritchie film. "Yellow Dog" suffers from being too clever for its own good. Structurally, the novel is a mess. Characters are flung at the reader with little or no context whatsoever. These characters then disappear for pages, and when they pop back up, it is both jarring and confusing. The novel has its moments of brilliance, but the author toyed with stylistic elements that were trite and annoying. For example--at one point the king has an assignation with his mistress He Zizhen, and we are told, "He touched him. He touched He....He touched him and he touched He." At another point, "the king was not in his counting house, counting out his money." Somehow with this sort of flippancy, I started to wonder if Amis was as bored with the writing of this book as I was with reading it. Amis can write, and he can write very, very well. But "Yellow Dog" was humourless, ugly, and boring--displacedhuman.
Rating:
Summary: "Flesh with the rubbery look of pasta."
Review: In the Martin Amis novel, "Yellow Dog", Xan Meo is savagely attacked by two men, and as a result, Meo suffers from a head injury. Clint Smoker--a journalist at the tabloid newspaper the Morning Lark receives a tip about the beating from his drug pusher, Andrew New. Smoker usually spends his days creating fake erotic letters purporting to be from readers, so he is only mildly interested in the tip about the beating. In fact, Clint is much more interested in his new internet relationship, but soon Clint is more involved with the Meo beating than he ever imagined. "Yellow Dog" is full of odd characters--most of them are unpleasant and uninteresting. There's a king who maintains a mistress in Paris while he frets about the circulation of some rather naughty photographs of his daughter. There's a 'homeless' man who lives with his mother, and there's Brendan Urquhart-Gordon--the king's henchman. The most interesting and best-developed character is the physically unappealing, Clint Smoker--he sports a tattoo of a noose around his neck and has a tiny pair of handcuffs hanging through his nose. The descriptions of the Morning Lark offices and Smoker's disgusting home were priceless and pure Amis at his naughty boy best. I rarely buy hardbacks and usually wait for coveted new titles to appear in paperback, but I broke my usual behaviour and bought "Yellow Dog" soon after it was published. In 2003, I discovered Martin Amis and read "Money" and "Success" rapidly. Both were excellent books, and "Money" is one of the best modern novels I've read. So when I heard that Martin Amis had a new book out, I could hardly wait to get my hands on it. Unfortunately, "Yellow Dog" is a big disappointment. Imagine the elements of a Westlake mystery meeting the intellect of Julian Barnes--toss in a liberal dose of cynicism and bleak sarcasm, and there you have it--a literary version of a Guy Ritchie film. "Yellow Dog" suffers from being too clever for its own good. Structurally, the novel is a mess. Characters are flung at the reader with little or no context whatsoever. These characters then disappear for pages, and when they pop back up, it is both jarring and confusing. The novel has its moments of brilliance, but the author toyed with stylistic elements that were trite and annoying. For example--at one point the king has an assignation with his mistress He Zizhen, and we are told, "He touched him. He touched He....He touched him and he touched He." At another point, "the king was not in his counting house, counting out his money." Somehow with this sort of flippancy, I started to wonder if Amis was as bored with the writing of this book as I was with reading it. Amis can write, and he can write very, very well. But "Yellow Dog" was humourless, ugly, and boring--displacedhuman.
Rating: 
Summary: Lighten up, it's Martin
Review: Martin Amis is the Transatlantic voice of the Baby Boom generation, and he sets the pace for other writers. Most of the modern novelists just don't get it. Martin does. He's post-PostModern, and of course "Yellow Dog" is a mess, because it's intended to be a parody of a novel. That's the whole point. Mr. Amis is famous for being famous Amis, and also for recurrent themes in his fiction, none of which he takes all that seriously. The silliness and unavailing nature of fame and wealth ("Money," "The Information"), the meaningless of life (nearly the whole list), and humanity's disappearing illusions as intellectual discovery continues. The point is, there's very little left to write about; you shouldn't quite take it seriously, a grown man making up characters and putting them through their paces. So he indulges in style, for fun, as a jape, heaping opacity upon banalities, fooling around with Joycean obscurity (clearly a major influence) and Bellow-like platitudinous bellowing. He's funny as hell (the stuff about Smoker's life"style" ["his bathroom was the only non-unbelievable room in the house;" who else could write that?]), he writes like a dream, and you simply can't waste your time while you're reading him. He's the best there is, and has been for a long time. If you like neat and tidy plot structures, deadpan sincerity, and no loose ends, read someone else. If you want to have fun and laugh at the world, read Martin Amis. The rest of the hacks do, even when they're trashing him.
Rating: 
Summary: Written for the Dogs
Review: Martin Amis' Yellow Dog is essentially an unreadable, pretentious, and painful book. You'd have to be a masochist to go beyond page 23, and believe me, I tried but the sheer confusion and boredom brought quick sleep to my eyes. Amis wants to become this century's James Joyce what with supposed innovative use of verbs for nouns and adjectives for verbs. He attempts to play with language the way a child plays with the mud that has formed in front of his cottage after a day or two of rain, and then comes back to the clean kitchen. The sad effect is the same. Get real, dear Martin, for God's sake. I turned blue in the face trying to make head or tails out of this dog.
Rating:
Summary: Martin Amis reeks of the english department
Review: Martin Amis's fictions are chockful of characterological implausibilities. And that's because Amis is a solipsist whose characters always turn out to be mouthpieces for Martin Amis. He's incapable of creating independent life on the page. Here's characterological implausibility #9724:
From YELLOW DOG: "His first thought was: Shelley. The undulant frizz of hair, the daunted orbits of the eyes, the sharp lips."
Id est: when Clint Smoker sees k8, Clint thinks that k8 looks like Percy Shelley. But Amis should've included that first name. Because someone could just as well interpret Shelley as referring to Mary Shelley. Full marks for sloppy vagueness, Mart. (This is Saul Bellow's cue to simultaneously sing and clap out the words "Be specific!" to the tune of Handel's HALLELUJAH chorus.)
I don't care HOW androgynous Percy Shelley looked. And thus how convenient it was to illustrate k8 by saying that she looked like Shelley. It's ludicrously out of character for Clint to be on familiar terms with Percy Shelley in the first place. It makes Clint look like a tedious tunnel-visioned english-department wankerateur. (Which is a fate arguably worse than having a tiny penis.)
Rating:
Summary: Critics too harsh
Review: Ok it's not as great as his earlier works such as "Money" and "London Fields", but still better than most books published this year including some short-listed for the Booker Prize. It contains some typically wonderful Amis humor and word play. Yellow Dog is well worth reading: a decent achievement by one of the world's great modern writers.
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