Martin Amis Reading Tomorrow Night

Martin Amis will read from House of Meetings at 6:00 pm at the Brattle Theater, courtesy of Harvard Book Store. By the way, tonight's reading with Paul Auster is sold out.

Martin Amis has been trying to get Stalin out of his system for a while. It's not working.

Amis' House of Meetings can be considered a fictional take on life - or what was left of it - under Stalin, a topic Amis covered with the nonfiction Koba the Dread.

In this book, an old man writes an e-mail to his stepdaughter about his time in one of Stalin's labor camps. This man survives thanks to his brutality, but he must protect his poet/pacifist brother who is also thrown into the camp. Complicating matters even more is a love triangle between a woman and the two brothers.

Amis' recent books have been considered stinkers, but this one is winning over the frosty hearts of some critics. For example, the Toronto Star headlined its review of the book "Another Dose of Amis Hell," but they actually thought it was decent.

In terms of local reviews, the Globe considered the book a pale take on Solzhenitsyn, while the Phoenix praised it. Reading Amis can be a bit of a gamble, but chances are that House of Meetings will pay off.