Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11390 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Guardian
'Terribly, terminally funny: laughter in the dark, if ever I heard it'

Guardian
'Terribly, terminally funny: laughter in the dark, if ever I heard it'

Synopsis
This is the story of John Self, consumer extraordinaire. Rolling around New York and London, he makes deals, spends wildly and does reckless movie-world business, all the while grabbing everything he can to sate his massive appetites: alcohol, tobacco, pills, pornography, a mountain of junk food and more. Ceaselessly inventive and thrillingly savage, this is a tale of life lived without restraint; of money, the terrible things it can do and the disasters it can precipitate.

Customer Reviews

A savage funny monologue
This is a novel written in the early 80's and is one long monologue about money and what chasing money, having money( and not having money) does to John Self the central character. He is a successful Ad director but at heart a fast talking East end boozing womaniser addicted to fast food and porno. And if you still like him, he beats up women, tends to be a racist, and hates gays... and horror of horror smokes. But he does have a turbulent broth of family relationships to deal with!

This could be an echo of real life as Martin Amis had a troubled relationship with his father Kingsley Amis. Who incidentally was critical of the device of having the author as a character in the story which allows Martin to take some sly digs at the pretensions of writers and writing.

John Self meets a producer in New York and spins him a story based on his own life (drunkard father, two timing mother, time waster son) and is then embroiled in the nightmare of putting the money, script and casting together. He lurches between New York and London loving money and suffering from excesses of drink, food and sex and looses girlfriend, friends and family along the way in a glorious buffoon way.

As he tries to deal with actor's egos, money men demands and scripts he is also hounded by a stalker . Or is he? We can only understand what john understands and as he is drinking several bottles of whiskies on week long benders he is a little hazy some times on the details. During the story we get to find out what the truth of his rise to the Money as well as family secrets and who cheats who.

As the novel is set up to be a long suicide note you can sense the depths of his pain. So is this a gloomy, slash your wrist Leonard Cohen fun feast? No it's a very funny and savage satire on money, money and money and oh the film industry. Normally, I dislike first person novels but I strongly recommended this one.

A TRUE MORALIST
Martin Amis is the Jonathan Swift of our age. He exposes the inner corruption of self deceit and the lies that money brings. He brings a brilliant searchlight into the dark corners of our civilisation. A fearless prophet for our time: read his essays on Islamism.

Relentless...and exhausting....
Money is just exhausting to read.... It describes the main character's (John Self) self-destruction - his own relentless drive to descend deeper and deeper into a pit of his own filfth until he annihilates anything human about himself. John Self is one large pustulating festering boil of a human being, full of weakness, sadism, spite, bile and everything unpleasant you can think of.

Money is very gritty and grim and the characters are despicable - all of them: man and woman included. Even the author, who is also a character in the book, doesn't get off lightly!

As a book about the darker side of 1980s materialism it works well and it's certainly very compelling reading, but I felt kind of grubby whenever I put it down (which is probably the point...) and wouldn't call Money an enjoyable read and it certainly wasn't in the slightest bit uplifting.

It's clear when you read this book why Amis is considered a good writer. He has the ability to see straight through to the most repellent side of human nature and the technique to put it down on paper. However, I don't think I can stomach any more of his novels as I have a feeling that this is his style...!

This is definitely more of a bloke's book than a woman's.