Yellow Dog (novel)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (February 2008)

Yellow Dog is the title of a 2003 novel by the British writer Martin Amis. Its setting, like many of Amis’s novels, is contemporary London. The novel contains several strands that appear to be linked, although a complete resolution of the plot is not immediately apparent.

[edit] Plot summary

The main protagonist is Xan (or Alex) Meo, a well-known actor and writer, who is the son of Mick Meo, a violent London gangster who had died in prison years previously. Xan is severely beaten, apparently for mentioning the name of Joseph Andrews, one of his father’s gangland rivals, in a book. The beating affects Xan’s personality, and he becomes increasingly estranged from his wife, Russia (an academic who studies the families of tyrants), and two young daughters. Andrews is also conspiring with Cora Susan, who wants to take revenge on Xan because Mick Meo had crippled her father (who was sexually abusing Cora).

Using the pseudonym of Karla White, a porn actress, Cora lures Xan to California and tries to seduce him, with the intention of wrecking his marriage, but fails. Xan confronts Andrews, who is also living in California, and learns that Andrews is his biological father. Xan confesses this to Cora, who reveals her own identity and confesses that Xan’s refusal to have sex with her, coupled with the fact that he is not really Mick Meo’s son, has undermined her plans for revenge against the Meo family.

Britain’s monarch in the novel is not Elizabeth II, but Henry IX, whose 15-year old daughter, Victoria, is about to become involved in a scandal when a videotape of her in the nude is released to the press. It transpires that Joseph Andrews has conspired with Henry’s mistress, He Zhizhen, in order to obtain the tape and blackmail the authorities into allowing him to return to Britain without being arrested. Andrews returns, still intending to use his henchman, Simon Finger, to intimidate Xan by assaulting Russia Meo. The king and princess decide to abdicate, effectively abolishing the monarchy.

Clint Smoker, a senior reporter with a downmarket tabloid newspaper, is writing a series of articles of Ainsley Car, a maverick footballer with a history of assaults upon women. Despite his macho image, Clint is sexually dysfunctional, and responds hopefully to a series of flirtatious text messages from someone named “k8”. Upon discovering that “k8” is a transsexual, Clint, who has talked with ‘Karla White’ in California, becomes enraged and drives to confront Andrews (whom Clint appears to blame for his ill-fated meeting with “k8”). Clint kills both Simon Figner and Andrews, but is blinded in his struggle with the latter.

Throughout the novel, reference is made to the arrival of a comet, which is to pass dangerously close to the earth. An airliner experiences a number of problems on its journey to New York from London, and is obliged to make an emergency landing at the moment the comet arrives.

[edit] Major themes

The novel can be read as a meditation upon male violence. The threat of the comet is, like the idea of time reversal in Time’s Arrow, and the total eclipse in London Fields, another instance of Amis’s frequent use of awe-inspiring natural phenomena, and of devices derived from science fiction, as a means of conveying a sense of doom. This sense is heightened by the theme of ethical decline that is another hallmark of Amis’s work, and is manifest in the novel’s treatment of subjects such as incest, adultery, sexual exploitation, and violence. The character of Russia Meo is an expert on the children of tyrants, and it seems evident that the author is drawing parallels between power and tyranny on both the large and the small scale. Sympathy for the victims of abusive power – particularly children – is implied, but there is also a disturbing sense of helplessness in the face of human (particularly male) depravity. The only note of redemption offered lies with Xan’s struggle against his worst impulses and his slow, difficult reconciliation with his wife and children.