Money

Rating:
Summary: Good read.
Review: Amis has often written about the ego of the literary author, and here he creates the greatest challenge to his own ego: a novel that takes place entirely within the thoughts and actions of a main character, John Self, that is truly despicable, and without redemption. How can a book be readable when its protagonist is such a louse? Other readers have complained that Self`s excesses, including his attempted rape of his girlfriend, detract from the humor. They don`t get it: Amis has made a compelling novel about a character that has zero redeeming value; he has dragged the reader through 400 some pages of the thoughts and repetitive excessess of a character he/she hates. This is truly extraordinary.

As if this wasn`t enough, Amis injects himself into the narrative, offering literary theory which acts as the authors elbow jab to the chops. Is the author morally resonsible for his characters? Amis should hope not. Great book.

Rating:
Summary: Funnier than Lucky Jim by a factor of three.
Review: Amis has succeeded in making a hard-drinking, hard-drugging, and occasional date-rapist a profoundly sympathetic character. The more frequently the protagonist--if he can be called that--overdoses on pornography the more you ask your girlfriend to get up and get you a beer. Such is the state of the tail end of the 20th century, as Amis brilliantly conveys.

Rating:
Summary: The Opening Salvo
Review: Even though it was written in the mid-'80s and is set in 1981, Amis's novel was probably the first major fictional salvo on the culture of capitalism that pervaded the entire decade and characterized the Reagan/Thatcher era in the West. Almost twenty years after its publication, the book's language and style remain vivid and distinctive, but its satirical power has greatly diminished. The materialism and shallowness of the '80s, especially in certain segments of American and British society, has been so widely skewered to have become cliché, and it's very difficult to read the book now without mentally referencing other major works such as The Bonfire of the Vanities, and especially American Psycho.

The story (what there is of it) is narrated by John Self, a 30ish British director of commercials set to embark on his first Hollywood deal. A figure of Falstaffian excess, he drinks, smokes ("unless otherwise states, I am _always_ lighting another cigarette"), whores, handjobs, and bumbles his way through the book, which switches between New York and London as he works with California golden boy Fielding Goodman to set up his movie. Self is a parody of an insecure, self-destructive, racist, misogynist, money-grubbing alcoholic and Amis beats the reader over the head with this caricature. Are we supposed to be sympathetic toward this loser who has been socially conditioned to value only money and sex, or are his antics supposed to amuse, or both? Various reviewers have suggested one or the other reaction, however, boredom is the more likely response. It's hard to imagine being simpatico with the self-anihilating protagonist-unless one has similar problems in their own lives. Meanwhile, the much vaunted humor of the book is very hit or miss, and grows steadily absent as the repetitiveness of Self's antics wear thin.

It's too bad, because Amis's goal of highlighting the emptiness of packaged objects of desire and the behavior their pursuit encourages, is a very worthy endeavor. And buried in all of it somewhere is some interesting stuff about the relationship between sex and money. Ultimately, though, it's hard to sit through Self's lengthy slide to the gutter without wondering why it's taking so long to get to. At 250 pages, the book might have fully engaged me, but at 350, it feels bloated and a little self-indulgent. Still, it's hard not to appreciate the many fine twists and turns of language Amis employs in the service of his labored satire.

Rating:
Summary: Amis at his dry best
Review: His best work to date, dry as a bone, pedantically loquatious and yet totally down to earth. Martin Amis has a rare gift and shares it with us here in all it's disgusting beauty. He examines life as proctologist might examine a soiled daiper and reports on it's contents in unashamedly graphic prose

Rating:
Summary: Money: A suicide note
Review: I am not a bookworm and do not read as half as many books as I should, but what i would like to say is typed below. When one is reading any book from any one of the BILLIONS of titles available worldwide, you have have to consider the images protrayed in ones imagination. Every individuals is different, but if a author such as M Amis can move me as much as he did by "money" im sure he can do the same for you. Just read it.

Rating:
Summary: READ IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I can't think of a better or funnier book I've read on life in the 20th century. If you've never read Martin Amis you are really missing something. Mr. Self is one of the most memorable characters I've ever encountered in literature. Sort of a George Costanza in print - with quite a bit more wit. A totally debased, buffoon that you couldn't help but like. Amis' take on American life was spot on too. One of those rare books that you don't want to end.

Rating:
Summary: Ones and Fives make it very clear to me.
Review: I don't even consider it a matter of opinion... This book is a lonely example of literature as raw artistic genius. It's boggling that a lone human mind in this watered down day and age has the ability to write so thoroughly. I nearly dropped the book when I finally picked up on the fact that the entire novel was an allusion to Shakespeare's Othello.

But... what is perhaps more boggling is that readers who usually profess to have not understood the book, get online and write one-star reviews. It basically strikes me as a confession of their literary ignorance. There's just no way this is anything less than an exceptional book... and people who feel differently have obviously missed something along the way.

This book has seperated the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I don't mean to sound intellectually superior.... it just bums the hell out of me when someone dumps all over something they don't understand at all.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I loved London Fields, thought it was absolutely brilliant, so based on the ratings here picked up Money. It was entertaining for the first quarter of the book then really fell apart. I must admit I never finished it, I couldn't stand it anymore. I ran out of any empathy for the main character (in fact I began to hate him) and when M.A. inserts himself into the storyline it was too corny to handle. Pass on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Good and Shallow Comic Book, LOL.
Review: I read this book a year ago and chuckled all the way through it. John Self, the protagonist, is a caricature of a senseless, ignorant, materialistic, depraved, pseudo, arrogant,oportunistic man of the yuppie "rat-race" early 80's. Ruthless, narcisistic, naive egotist, out to get the money for himself. He is also the narrator of this novel, taking the reader on a rough ride along him, in London and N.Y., and also within his chaotic, fragmentary and unruly mind and existence.

From what I've read in the previous reviews there seems to be a dichotomy of opinion: some people praise Amis work as genius and others consider it, to put it mildly, a waste of paper.

My view, for this novel in particular, lies somewhere in the middle. This novel has indeed no substance, and it is completely pointless. (The allusions to Othello are by the way ludicrous or at least to far fetched, and even if this was one of the books aims it seems very pretentious an aim to me.) You 'll find no worthy social commentary in here, except for the obvious and thin satire of materialist culture and early 80's excesses. Moreover you should be warned that the protagonist, as made clear from what i've written above, is in no way likeable and does not evolve any feelings of empathy from the reader's part, you might pity him or laugh at him at certain parts of the book, and I would wager this the way the author views his character as well. Now, some have said that soaking the reader up in depravity and ignorance is Amis's way of creating the opposite effect and demonstrating the emptyness of the whole early 80's yuppie scene. I 'd have to disagree on that. It is like saying that if i disapprove of something i would sit down and write a 500 page payan, a litany of it. Not so.

That said it's just one the funniest novels i've ever read, and if you do not expect much out of it then you can sit back and enjoy the mock humour, the parody, and the hyperboly of the whole construct, reading it in snippets of a few pages since neither the thoughts of John Self nor the structure of the book have any sort of coherency. You can also laugh at the author of the novel for choosing to cast himself in two roles in his story, as himself Martin Amis in London, and on the other side as the would-be-saviour of Self's life Martina Twain (or could this be Marc Twain transvestite?), to add a postmodern (or something) edge to the whole ensemble, or for whatever other reason.

So, two stars for making me laugh. All style, no substance as usual with Amis books, but I believe this one is the best he ever wrote, or wil write. Give it a go, and if you put it down because of the racism and misogyny and Self-loathing then you won't be in for the laugh.

Rating:
Summary: I decided to quit at p. 78.
Review: I wouldn't even give it one star. The best word I can find to describe this book is cheesey. It's about as compelling as a car wreck. I'm wondering how to get rid of it. I can't recommend it to a friend. It's not even amusing, just dumb and kind of annoying, especially a few pages before 78, when the narrator mentions the author, Martin Amis, by name, as someone whose stalking him. Just dumb.