SOURCE: Brookner, Anita. “All Good Pals and Jolly Bad Company.” Spectator 281, no. 8875 (12 September 1998): 39.

In the following review, Brookner criticizes Amsterdam, faulting the plot for being underdeveloped, lacking female characters, and weak characterizations.

When three old friends—well, two friends and one intimate enemy—meet at a former lover's funeral and offer their glum condolences [in the novel Amsterdam] to the deceased's uninteresting husband, George, they set in train a revenge tragedy which is ludic, heartless, and oddly lightweight. The friends are Clive Linley, a composer who is working on a symphony for the Millennium, Vernon Halliday, editor of a newspaper entitled The Judge, and Julian Garmony, a politician expected to challenge the Prime Minister for the leadership. All are shaken by Molly's last illness, which began, sinisterly, with a tingling in the left arm before developing rapidly into full-blown helplessness.

In the days following the funeral both Clive...