Brain damage from the beating affects Xan's personality, and he becomes increasingly estranged from his wife, Russia (an academic who studies the families of tyrants), and two young daughters.

It transpires that Joseph Andrews has conspired with Henry's mistress, He Zhizhen, to obtain the tape and blackmail the authorities into allowing him to return to Britain without being arrested.

Clint Smoker, a senior reporter with a downmarket tabloid newspaper, is writing a series of articles of Ainsley Car, a maverick footballer with a history of assaults upon women.

"[7] Tibor Fischer made one of the most quoted statements in a book review of modern times[6][8][9] saying in The Daily Telegraph "Yellow Dog isn't bad as in not very good or slightly disappointing.

[11] The Independent said "unimaginative and un-entertaining [...] Over-written, overcrowded and underpowered, Yellow Dog is a joyless, boring long-haul flight to nowhere [...] you'll find more humour – and sophistication – in a single issue of The Beano.

"[12] The Guardian's reviewer, Alan Hollinghurst, found "Yellow Dog a disturbing book, but its opening pages create a mood of excited reassurance: Martin Amis at his best, in all his shifting registers, his drolleries and ferocities, his unsparing comic drive, his aesthetic dawdlings and beguilements, his wry, confident relish of his own astonishing effects [...] Everything Amis writes is highly structured, but Yellow Dog gives signs of quite bristling organisation, in its three parts and its subdivided and subheaded chapters.

"[13] The Times said "Yellow Dog marks a further plummeting in his literary trajectory [...] Interweaving all [the plot strands] into a compelling or indeed coherent novel proves beyond Amis's capabilities [...] Wonkily put together, his book is also copiously second-hand.

"[14] The New York Times gave a more favourable assessment: "aside from the novel's jagged formlessness and Amis's wearisome fondness for comic euphemism, the writing is still agile and exact, the hyperbole driven and punishing and the characters – when he lets them be – charismatically repulsive.