Narrating the Grotesque in Martin Amis’ London Fields

This paper aims at examining the relation between the treatment of the central motif of the grotesque and the narrative mode in Martin Amis’ London Fields. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin s theorization of the grotesque as mostly a matter of the clash of forces or categories, an attempt is made to trace the juxtaposition of the attractive and the repulsive elements as reflected in the novel s style (including narrative style). Central to the analysis is that the incorporation of the grotesque in this postmodernist novel which has a bearing on its narrative mode, particularly in the undermining of the reader s expectations about novelistic/literary authority, the narrator, reliability, linearity as well as the pastiche-like commingling of the skaz tradition and modern-day media techniques with literary eloquence.