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lorenzoberardi

The Library of Babel

A Spin-off of http://bookwormshead.blogspot.co.uk

Time's Arrow - Martin Amis I read this book while I was living in Oslo on 2005.
Then, for some reason I forgot to add it to my booklist.

It might have been amnesia.
After all in those five months I spent in old Christiania my attention was diverted by many things. I recall the London bombings, hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, the Norwegian parliamentary elections, the Indonesian national day, my struggle with bokmaal pronounciation and two or three juvenile infatuations with unaware girls.

Well, no surprises those ladies ignored a chap who put his library card over a proper haircut and a dog-eared Hungarian-made notepad over a decent well ironed shirt.
For in those penniless, charmless and laptopless Norwegian days, a library card and a notepad were my most beloved possessions and I hardly spent a single hour without one of them.

While the notepad became a collection of notepads for a total of around 700 handwritten pages in the fashion of a sort of messy diary, the library card introduced me to many authors I was not familiar with such as Saul Bellow, John Fante, Don De Lillo, John Updike, Knut Hamsun.
And Martin Amis, yes.

Now I remember that "Time's Arrow" was kind of good -thus the 3 stars rate- but I completely forgot what it talked about. Life going backwards? A broken clock? Michael J. Fox? You name it.
Well, I suppose that the essential thing is that this novel led me to get more books by Martin Amis in the following years. Which means that I had a good imprinting with Amis junior. Leastways. Ok, time out?