Martin Amis turns to a tricky literary conceit to tell the story of an ex-Nazi, Dr. Tod T. Friendly. Friendly is possessed of two separate voices, one running backward from his death, the other running forward, fleeing his unsavory past.
Maggie vowed to never marry a man who can’t laugh or dance, but when she and the dull new doctor in town, Everett Dulanis, wind up spending the night together in an abandoned dugout house, all that changes. Her father is the best man and his shotgun is the bridesmaid at the wedding where a union has been made, but there’s certainly no unity. Everett was engaged to Carolina Prescott, a southern lady in...