If you spent your weekend reading book reviews, you know that ASBO stands for Anti-Social Behavior Orders, which are issued in Great Britain for certain acts, like public drunkenness and urinating in public.  The titular character of Martin Amis’s new novel, Lionel Asbo: State of England (RH/Knopf) received his first one at age 3.

The New York Observer sums up the reactions of most reviewers; “A mediocre book by Martin Amis is better than most books by anyone else, but unfortunately, a bad book by Martin Amis is just as bad as any other bad book. And Lionel Asbo is a bad book.” Only the Kansas City Star dissents, calling it ” one of [Amis’s] most compulsively readable” novels.

Amis himself explained both the title and the subtitle in an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2012 at 11:12 am and is filed under 2012 -- Summer, Fiction, Literary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.