his tabloid newspaper The Daily Lark, is so great that he becomes confused with reality. When he stars in the darts "docu-drama" – itself implying a dangerous mixture, or confusion, of reality and TV-fiction, he is unable to cope with the concept and it is Nicola who must "translate him" for TV. London Fields and literary geography London Fields is a park in Hackney, east London, but the novel is set in west London, like most of Amis's work. The park in which the narrator, Sam, walks with various characters – Nicola Six, Guy Clinch and Keith Talent – is Hyde Park in central London. Sam reminisces that he played in "London Fields" as a boy, and wants to return there before his death. It is not clear whether the "London Fields" he refers to is the real-life East London park, or whether it has another meaning. The title suggests a paradox: a rural or pastoral place in a modern urban setting. Sam's narrative refers again to this inherent paradox, as he remarks that in London "there are no fields", only fields of attraction and repulsion, only force fields. The title indicates to the reader the ambiguities inherent in Amis's creation of an imagined London: there is a conflict between the descriptions of London locations in the novel and their location in reality. The topography of the imagined city cannot fit exactly onto the topography of the real city. Just as Sam realises that "this is London and there are no fields", and just as he is unable to return to the "London Fields" of his childhood, it is similarly impossible for us to return to the stage of London as a field. London Fields exists simultaneously as a real place in the real London, and as an imagined and dreamed-of place "present all along" on every page of the novel, and the scene of a murder. A theme in London Fields is pub culture, specifically the culture of Keith's "local" The Black Cross. The book also references The Marquis of Edenderry, a pub in the west London suburb of Acton. One of Keith Talent's darts matches takes place in the Marquis of Edenderry. Keith Talent also drinks at a late-night drinking club called The Golgotha. Reception Simon Schama commented in 2011: "Martin Amis' glorious fury, London Fields; the never-likely-to-be-bettered bedtime story from the heart of Mrs Thatcher's darkest Albion;