Martin Amis' Yellow Dog is essentially an unreadable, pretentious, and painful book. You'd have to be a masochist to go beyond page 23, and believe me, I tried but the sheer confusion and boredom brought quick sleep to my eyes. Amis wants to become this century's James Joyce what with supposed innovative use of verbs for nouns and adjectives for verbs. He attempts to play with language the way a child plays with the mud that has formed in front of his cottage after a day or two of rain, and then comes back to the clean kitchen. The sad effect is the same. Get real, dear Martin, for God's sake. I turned blue in the face trying to make head or tails out of this dog.