Money

Rating:
Summary: He's Amis...
Review: Once an Amis fan, always an Amis fan. Money is quite possibly one of the best novels I've ever read, nevermind that it's an Amis novel. He opens up existential angst in the broadest, most heartbreaking and accessible way, that it makes movies seem just plain irrelevant.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Brilliant
Review: Reading the superlatives expressed in the reviews of this book ought to make you read it. It is an _important_ book, and an enjoyable piece of literature at that. What a magnificent writer is Amis.

Rating:
Summary: If they don't get it, forget it
Review: Terrifying genius. Possibly the funniest book I've ever read. I use it as a sort of criteria for evaluating people (potential friends/lovers, etc). If they don't get/like it, what do they think is the point of them?

Rating:
Summary: "Keep a fix on the addiction industries."
Review: The novel "Money" by Martin Amis is the brilliant, wickedly funny tale of John Self--a man tempted by all the vices known to human flesh as he negotiates his way through the moral minefield of the film industry.

John Self is a 35 year-old successful director of advertisements who embarks on the creation on his first film--"Dirty Money" or "Clean Money" (even the title seems to be up for grabs). "Money Man" Fielding Goodney--the bronzed, perfect male specimen from California leads John through the fleshpots of New York while arranging the film's financing. John already has a number of nasty habits (he's an alcoholic with a penchant for starting fights in strip bars), and when he's cast adrift in New York, John's already fragile system of ethics is suddenly under full assault.

First there's the problem of the film itself--everything is completely out of John's control. Egotistical stars vie for the most flattering, often quite ridiculous, portrayals. Aging Lorne Guyland keeps demanding nudie scenes for himself with the female stars (and he wants them suitably in awe). Spunk is in a major sulk after refusing to change his name. Butch, the young female starlet, has some nasty habits of her own involving hidden video equipment, and Caduta--the international box-office draw has a Madonna complex that's hard to beat. Then there's the scriptwriter, Doris, who has a mission of her own and a gender no-one can quite pin down.

Added to the problems of the film, is the enormous problem of John's personal life. He flies back and forth from New York to London trying to keep pace with the frenetic events whirling around him, and everywhere John goes there is money--the spending of it, the desire for it, and sometimes the lack of it. Money permeates and contaminates everything around John. Firmly ensconced in John's home and eager to test the limits of his credit cards is the succubus, Selina. She's a "compromise between the primly juvenile and the grossly provocative" and she provides John with a veritable endless repertoire of sexual gymnastics--fantasies, garter belts, and "brothelly knowhow"--Selina knows how to use herself to her ultimate advantage, and she steadily manipulates John into a corner.

This is not a novel for the easily offended. Some portions are sexually explicit, and the novel is not for the PC crowd--there's plenty of exploitation here, and John Self isn't exactly a sensitive type. He is a text-book version of the Unreliable Narrator--a classic--blacking out for days at a time, forgetting which bars he's banned from, and although he includes the reader with a conspiratorial tone, we are only privy to John's alcohol-sodden version of events. With a very clever touch, author Martin Amis even manages to seamlessly introduce the writer, Martin Amis as a character and a reliable voice of sanity in this nightmarish tale of one man's descent to hell and painful redemption--displacedhuman

Rating:
Summary: A Big Bim!
Review: This book contains one of the finest first-person narratives ever written. Coarse and chummy, fretful and alcoholic, the narrator is a Studebaker-sized beast of a man who skates to his ruin on too much booze, bad credit and pornography. Reading this book is like watching a rampaging circus elephant get shot in mid-city traffic, sink slowly to its knees and die.

Rating:
Summary: "Bright Lights, Big City with a "Monty Python" twist!!
Review: This book has got to be one of the funniest books I have ever read!! Mr. Amis creates in "John Self" a character with narry a redeeming quality! This character is strictly "id" oriented; which results in his eventual fall from 80's over-indulgence!! There is no time to pity this guy, as his world crumbles around him, because you're laughing too hard!!

Rating:
Summary: VERY funny - well written
Review: This book is awesome, highly readable and very funny. Some of the lines had me laughing out loud and the rest had me sniggering. ENJOY! I am going to search out the rest of this guys work - what have i been missing?

Rating:
Summary: PIG OUT!
Review: This book was great, it's depravity defined. Just when you think a man can't stoop lower in life, the John Self (the name is fitting) amazes you at how low he can go. Highly recommended for those with too much "money" in their pockets...and a small moral lesson that follows with it.

Rating:
Summary: money
Review: this is a great book, immensely well written. but trust me, that after you read enough of martin amis, you should get sick of martin amis---of the personality style and construction of his writing: the man comes through. and that man is excessively showy, deluded, and obsessed with matters of little consequence. or it least it so appears. i'd like to read depressing writing, at least, with more consequence.

Rating:
Summary: A big Bim with Cool Pants!
Review: This is an unlikely candidate for one of my top 10 books of all time, but succeeds on every level. Amis manages to put you in the shoes of a despicable man who you can't help but like, while at the same time giving you the distance with which to observe him and his all too inevitable, but pathos-soaked downfall. The plot is intricately revealed, the action hilarious (witness Self's translation of his drunken actions) and the dialogue is quite simply among the best and wittiest I have ever seen. If this is taken as the book of the start of the Money decade, then American Psycho with its bleak outlook and unforgiving style surely forms the other bookend to the decade. A must - you will be chuckling for years.