Reading 1001 discussion

I read this for my 2018 TBR challenge for March.
I gave it 3 stars as it is well written and well thought out. I was happy to be reading it. The author tells the story of a very terrible person backwards from his death through to his infancy. It left me thinking a great deal about cause and effect and how little choices in life can lead to bigger choices which lead on to very bad repercussions. The main character seemed never to have thought through his choices but in the end he had made a horrible life. I found the role of the narrator in the story, who had no control over his "body", to be a contrived one, but it was an effective way to tell the story without having to take on a god's eye view of events. It was almost as if once we die we get to relive our life backwards without being able to change anything. This created some interesting visuals, such as doctors smashing up people that were well. However, it left the narrator very naive. He had judgement, but because he could not exercise that judgement the reader could never guess how things would have been different from his different point of view. Overall I was left wondering if any of the characters had made real choices or not and that perhaps that was the point of the book; we are all victims of our moment in time.
The book is very short so I could appreciate the intelligent thoughts and not be too exasperated by the lack of character development within the story.

Read 2017
Time's Arrow by Martin Amis published 1991 is the story of Dr. Tod T. Friendly, living in the United States, who once worked in Auschwitz as a doctor. The story is told in reverse chronology and makes the mere 165 pages a very laborious read. No doubt Martin Amis is a skilled writer but this is not the first book written about a man's life lived backwards because there is Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The difference in this case, the man is old and dying and maybe his life is flashing backwards and it is told by the narrating soul of the man. It is all very confusing. I can't really say I enjoyed the story. I felt that there was inconsistencies and the plot, story board and turning points were difficult using reverse chronology. My rating is 3.43

This was an intriguing read. The premise is that an old man is living his life in reverse, narrated by his “soul” who is observing what happens without having any agency in his life. There are interesting passages about assembling meals from rubbish bins, or doctors harming rather than healing, but it is a difficult premise to maintain and it is ultimately unconvincing. A quote: Like writing, paintings seem to hint at a topsy-turvy world in which, so to speak, time’s arrow moves the other way. Not clearly explained. As we regress from an elderly retired doctor to a younger intern we gradually realise with horror that the protagonist was a doctor at Auschwitz. It is not an easy topic for a novel but I propose that Amis’ arrow falls short of his target.

A concept book that might have been interesting to bandy around at dinner parties, but which was mostly build up in the execution. I found the distant and didactic voice-over perspective boring and repetitive. But the holocaust is hard to write about in any new way, so I get the urge to experiment. Taking it at its philosophical self, what is running it backwards and making it disappear really saying?

The narrator is a spirit stuck inside a man at the moment of his death as the movie of his life rewinds - literally, everything goes backwards including things like going to the bathroom, which is described more than once. This spirit sees and hears but doesn't have access to any thoughts - can remember as the future becomes the past, but the world obviously can't because once we are in the past the future doesn't exist for the humans. So we watch starting from old man with a haunting nightmare, to a younger womanizing man, back in time with the world not making sense to the spirit because everything goes backwards - relationships start off in anger and sex and end with flowers and a few stolen glances, violence calms crying and undents the fridge, the garden is destroyed, money flows in the wrong direction (see, you got the picture in one sentence, you didn't need 120 pages).

Until we arrive - this is a holocaust novel, and with the character's arrival over the mountains in Italy as a doctor in Aushwitz the "world can make sense" and running time backwards is now healing, creating people out of corpses. And at Treblinka, where there is no time because the clock hands are just painted on. But within only a few pages, the limits of this for literature are done, and also for humanity. Because the holocaust is unfortunately not a profound anomaly. It grew from something and it went back to something that we still have with us.

"Calling on powers best left unsummoned, he took human beings apart - and then he put them back together again. For a while it worked (there was redemption); and while it worked he and I were one, on the banks of Vistula. He put us back together. But of course you shouldn't be doing any of this kind of thing with human beings ... The party is over. A damp pink pillow is twisted in his fists. I'll always be here. But he's on his own.".

So the end of the book is the rest of his life back through his marriage and medical school and childhood to the origins of consciousness, many of which are perfectly capable of running forward and leading to horror. Not sure how many English readers will look up the final name of the character who has several ironic aliases (eg Todd Friendly) - and is ultimately given the German moniker Rich Innocence.