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That a writer known better for style than structure has set himself the challenge of making these plot strands connect is impressive, enough so that one forgives him the not-exactly-new targets of his satire. (Clint Smoker is a slightly smarter version of London Fields's Keith; the dithering out-of-touch King is familiar from news reports even if one skips much of contemporary British writing; etc.) And it's even OK when we begin to sense, in lieu of the author lecturing us, his characters doing it for him, as in the suspiciously leisurely and well-framed discussions between Xan Meo and his wife Russia (and, later, the criminal Cora Susan) about his sudden regression.

It's forgivable because these characters, at certain moments, display hints of a depth Amis barely even roughs out. When Russia kicks him out with the words "It would not be true to say that you raped me last night, but it would be true to say that you tried," you expect divorce papers to immediately follow; when she concludes, instead, with an unexpected show of psychological strength—telling him "our marriage is not over" and demanding "incredible effort" from him in therapy, Xan understands what's at stake: "Fidelity was his lifeline."

The unexpectedness of this turn of events raises the narrative stakes considerably. So does King Henry's anguished realization that he may be, somehow, at fault for what happened to Victoria. He writes, "I yearn to express the unconditional love and sympathy that I feel, but I just sound selfish and pompous. It's my poor character!" Yellow Dog's characters speak best in letters or notes: clever, chatty, and disarming at once. It's as if Amis has worked hardest at these junctures in the text.

What comes next, however, can only be judged a failure of nerve on the author's part. Kicked out of his house (he's begun to feel stirrings of a devouring lust for his toddler daughter) and unable to find work, Xan Meo takes a bit part in a porno movie being shot in California (a plot twist so thematically convenient it's unconvincing); he's followed there by Cora Susan, an ally of the gangster who originally attacked him, who plans to finish the revenge by seducing him, mailing photos to Russia and ruining his marriage. Xan and Cora—we are told rather than shown—"fall in love," though, and this somehow takes the edge off of Xan's regressive urges while simultaneously redeeming Cora.

The reader never sees how or why this happened; it's merely announced. Nor is Cora—or for that matter, Russia, or Princess Victoria or any other female creation in this book—drawn well enough to give the reader any idea how it may have happened. In earlier novels (Money being a prominent example) Amis discourses on the inadequacy of the idea of "motivation," saying that it doesn't adequately explain why people do what they do. This might be an interesting point, if it were clear what he means; as an excuse to avoid convincingly dramatizing his characters' actions and feelings, though, it sounds like humbug. It makes his characters ghosts, floating wanly through events in such a way as to offer opportunities for satire or moralizing. As for the porno setting of the novel's last chunk, it's there only so that Amis can share more of his clever observations with us—observations which are, moreover, mostly recycled from a 2002 Talk Magazine article on the same subject. By the end of the novel, he resembles a third-rate Oscar Wilde: a maker of smooth apothegms, a clever satirist who like most satirists is never far from preaching. We forget that Wilde, too, though he said that all bad poets are "sincere," wrote moral fables that are childlike in their earnestness.

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January (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49