House of Meetings

House of Meetings

First edition cover
Author	Martin Amis
Illustrator	Peter Mendelsund and Chip Kidd (US edition)
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Publisher	Jonathan Cape[1]
Publication date	2006
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	198

House of Meetings, by Martin Amis, is a 2006 novel about two brothers who share a common love interest while living in a Soviet gulag during the last decade of Stalin's rule. This novel was written by Amis during a two-year-long self-imposed exile in Uruguay following the release and tepid reception afforded to his 2003 novel Yellow Dog. The writing of House of Meetings "precipitated (another) creative crisis" for Amis,^[2] which Amis reflected upon in 2010:

"You see those Posy Simmonds cartoons of people by the pool having cocktails and saying into the Dictaphone, 'On the second day, the last child died,'" he says. "And I was in Uruguay, with my beautiful wife and beautiful daughters, living a completely stressless life. So I had to do my suffering on the page and, Christ, did I do it. I was very nervous about that book."^[2]

Plot summary[]

The novel centers on the modern-day (2004) recollections of the unnamed narrator/protagonist of his time spent in an Arctic gulag and the years that followed. The recollections are presented in the form of a memoir sent to the narrator's American stepdaughter, Venus. One of the primary plot elements is the complex relationship between the protagonist and his younger half-brother, Lev, who later joins him in the camp. Through many difficult revelations and trials, they eventually survive the harsh conditions of the camp and then must face a further challenge: re–acclimatizing to everyday life.

Literary significance and criticism[]

The novel's release was greeted with generally positive reviews; see, e.g., The Economist's October review.^[3]

Footnotes[]

External links[]

• "Breath was just another weapon": a review in the TLS by Bharat Tandon, September 2006.
• Tom Chatfield writes on Amis's House of Meetings for Prospect Magazine

Further reading[]

• Bentley, Nick (2014). Martin Amis (Writers and Their Work). Northcote House Publishing Ltd.

• Finney, Brian (2013). Martin Amis (Routledge Guides to Literature). Routledge.

• Bradford, Richard (November 2012). Martin Amis: The Biography. Pegasus. ISBN 978-1605983851.

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