''The Pregnant Widow'' is a novel by the English writer

Martin Amis Sir Martin Louis Amis (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was an English novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter and critic. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and '' London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Mem ...

, published by

Jonathan Cape Jonathan Cape is a British publishing firm headquartered in London and founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death. Cape and his business partner Wren Howard (1893–1968) set up the publishing house in ...

on 4 February 2010.Martin Amis Launch Event 'The Pregnant Widow'
, booktrade.info, accessed 2 February 2010. Its theme is the feminist revolution, which Amis sees as incomplete and bewildering for women, echoing the view of the 19th-century Russian writer,

Alexander Herzen Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (; ) was a Russian writer and thinker known as the precursor of Russian socialism and one of the main precursors of agrarian populism (being an ideological ancestor of the Narodniki, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Trudo ...

, that revolution is "a long night of chaos and desolation". The "pregnant widow", a phrase taken from Herzen's '' From the other shore'' (1848–1850), is the point at which the old order has given way, the new one not yet born. Amis said in 2007 that "consciousness is not revolutionised by the snap of a finger. And feminism, I reckon, is about halfway through its second trimester." The story is set in a castle owned by a cheese tycoon in

Campania Campania is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy located in Southern Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian Peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islan ...

, Italy, where Keith Nearing, a 20-year-old English literature student; his girlfriend, Lily; and her friend, Scheherazade, are on holiday during the hot summer of 1970, the year that Amis says "something was changing in the world of men and women".Long, Camilla
Martin Amis and the sex war
''The Times'', 24 January 2010. The narrator is Keith's

superego In psychoanalytic theory, the id, ego, and superego are three distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus, outlined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche. The three agents are theoretical constructs that Freud employed t ...

, or conscience, in 2009. The novel was a work-in-progress for the best part of seven years, his first since '' House of Meetings'' (2006). Originally set for release in late 2007, its publication was delayed to 2008, when he made what he describes as a "terrible decision" to abandon what he had written to that point, and begin again, building the story up from one section he retained, the part about Italy.Bilmes, Alex
Martin Amis: 'Women have got too much power for their own good'
''The Daily Telegraph'', 2 February 2010. The long gestation period resulted in its expansion to some 370 pages, making it his longest novel since '' The Information'' in 1995.The Pregnant Widow
Amazon, accessed 21 November 2009.

Background

Amis started writing the novel after the publication in 2003 of '' Yellow Dog'' to a hostile critical reception and muted commercial success. In a 2006 interview with ''The Independent'', he revealed that he had abandoned a novella, ''The Unknown Known'', and instead continued to work on a follow-up full novel that he had started in 2003. He said the new novel was "blindingly autobiographical, but with an Islamic theme".Bilmes, Alex
Martin Amis: 30 things I've learned about terror
''The Independent'', 8 October 2006. In an interview with Mark Lawson in 2006, Amis said there was some distance from the fictionalised versions of himself, his father,

Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social crit ...

and his novelist mentor,

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only write ...

, in ''The Pregnant Widow'', at this point untitled. He said he was "trying to keep up a little bit of indirection" with the autobiographical aspects, saying that his character in the novel was named "Louis" (Amis's middle name), that Kingsley Amis was "The King" and that Saul Bellow was "Chick" (which itself was a reference to the Saul Bellow proxy character in Bellow's final novel ''

Ravelstein ''Ravelstein'' is Saul Bellow's final novel. Published in 2000, when Bellow was eighty-five years old, it received widespread critical acclaim. It tells the tale of a friendship between a university professor and a writer, and the complications ...

''). Further details concerning the struggle to get the novel written emerged on 1 August 2009 during an interview Amis gave the ''National Post'': "I started a novel utthen I’m going to write a novella before I get on to it. But I was in big trouble a few years ago, with a huge, dead novel. And it took me a long time, and a lot of grief, to realize—I thought I was clutching at straws—it turned out it was actually two novels, and they couldn't go together. So I wrote ''The Pregnant Widow'', hat’sone half of it, and the other half I started, and it will be very autobiographical, the next one."

Sally Amis

The character of Violet Nearing, the protagonist's younger sister, is based on Sally Myfanwy Amis (19 January 1954 – 8 November 2000), Martin's younger sister. She had problems all her life with

alcoholism Alcoholism is the continued drinking of alcohol despite it causing problems. Some definitions require evidence of dependence and withdrawal. Problematic use of alcohol has been mentioned in the earliest historical records. The World He ...

and was described by Amis as one of the sexual revolution's most spectacular victims. At age 24 she gave birth to a daughter, Catherine, who was placed for adoption at three months. Sally suffered a stroke at 40 and died of an infection at age 46.Adams, Stephen
Martin Amis: the sexual revolution killed my sister Sally
''The Daily Telegraph'', 21 November 2009.

Reception

The novel was published to mixed reviews,

Eileen Battersby Eileen Battersby ( Whiston; 4 June 1956 – 23 December 2018) was the chief literary critic of ''The Irish Times''. She sometimes divided opinion, having been described by John Banville as "the finest fiction critic we have", while attracting ...

in ''The Irish Times'' calling it a "thumping disappointment", while Richard Bradford in ''The Spectator'' described it as a "unique, sometimes exquisite experience".Battersby, Eileen
Amis aims high . . . and misses
, ''The Irish Times'', 6 February 2010; Bradford, Richard
It happened one summer
''The Spectator'', 3 February 2010. After a considerable amount of speculation and high expectation, the novel was not included on the longlist for the 2010

Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

Background

Sally Amis

Reception

Notes

Further reading