Einstein's Monsters

Six stories and a polemical introductory essay, each of them about nuclear destruction. Weaving and passionate and un-neat, the essay may be best of all, whatever the merits of its arguments (Amis sides with Jonathan Schell, claiming that he is of a haunted generation to which nuclear weapons can't be just some unthought hidden nightmare). But the stories will disappoint: one's a shameless Bellow-clone ( Bujak and the Strong Force ); one a toneless post-Apocalypse fable ( The Little Puppy That Could ); and the one in which Amis' swing seems loosest, most comfortable - The Time Disease (a complete inversion of today's society, in a future when age means health and an attack of youth is like getting AIDS) - marshals some of Amis' brilliant jaundice but gives it nowhere especially to go at such short length. So, sober purpose and cri-de-coeur aside, it's a book that ultimately reads like pure razzmatazz ( I remember what the sky was like, when the sky was young - its shawls and fleeces, its bears and whales, its cusps and clefts. A sky of gray, a sky of blue, a sky of spice. But now the sky has gone, and we face different heavens ) - style doing content's chores. Amis is an important writer because his nose is so close up to the very worst, very most self-compromising. But here the nose lifts a little, to look down in sorrow - and the angling just doesn't come off. (Kirkus Reviews)