Lionel Asbo, Martin Amis’s funniest and most
satisfying novel in years, opens on a typically edgy note. Desmond Pepperdine,
aged fifteen, is having an incestuous affair with his grandmother. The offence
is mitigated, slightly, by the consideration that she is only thirty-nine.
Desmond lives in the bleak London borough of Diston, where people breed early
and die young – “a world of italics and exclamation marks.” He is the son of a
black father he never knew, and a white mother who died when he was twelve. He
lives in a council high-rise with his mother’s brother, a fearsome career thug
named Lionel Asbo.
Asbo is the latest in a long line of Amis yobs, and he might
be the scariest of the lot. An ASBO, in real British life, is an Anti-Social
Behaviour Order. Lionel Asbo (né Pepperdine) is served his first ASBO at the
age of three – a national record. At eighteen he legally changes his surname to
Asbo. Why? Because Lionel goes out of his way to do stupid things. He is also
capable, when roused, of committing unspeakable acts of violence ... [read more]
