The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis

Ostensibly a novel about the sexual revolution, based around the pursuit of an elusive sexual encounter one summer in Italy, and told from the perspective of a fifty-something male and his twenty-year old alter-ego, this initially seemed an odd choice for our book group.  Beneath the veneer of sexual liberation, however, the novel is also exploring ideas about youth and ageing, and the inevitability of loss.

The late Richard Griffiths is reported to have said, "Everybody my age should be issued with a 2lb fresh salmon. If you see someone young, beautiful and happy, you should slap them as hard as you can with it. When they ask, 'Why did you do that?’, you say, 'Because, you lucky young bastard, you don’t know how fortunate you are.’ And they don’t...” And that, in essence, seems also to be Amis's perspective, though he creates a complex narrative structure and series of transient relationships to make essentially that same point.

Here are the proposed questions for discussion:

1. The title of the novel is based on a quotation by Alexander Herzen: 
   "The death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul. Yet what is frightening is that what the departing world leaves behind it is not an heir but a pregnant widow. Between the death of the one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by, a long night of chaos and desolation will pass."  
   How does the title work in the context of the novel?
2. How sympathetic a protagonist is Keith Nearing?
3. What is the effect of his status as Literature student (and critic and poet)? 
4. 'Nobody better understands the cosmic joke that is humanity.' How far do you agree?  Is this a comedy?
5. What do the settings of London and Italy contribute respectively to the success of the novel?
6. How are the female characters portrayed? Are they archetypal?
7. "Breaking the rules, buggering about with the reader, drawing attention to himself," Kingsley Amis complained of his son's early works.  Can the same be said of The Pregnant Widow? How successful is the narrative style and structure? Were you convinced by the narrative voice? 
8. What does the novel have to say about feminism?
9. Amis originally conceived The Pregnant Widow as a novel about the sexual revolution and about Islam. How important are the Muslim characters?

Happy reading!