Rating: 
Summary: absolutely the best
Review: This is one of the most well-written and funny books you'll ever read. My copy has multiple dog ears because I keep going back to look up this or that hilarious passage: Lorne Guyland's rambling dissertations, John Self's drunken careen through a NY restaurant, the chess game near the end (an amazing metaphor-packed *action* scene that you'll read wide-eyed at the fact that anyone could write with such style). Some readers don't seem to understand that you're supposed to despise John Self while still marveling at his antics. I feel bad for those people; I feel pity for those people--oh yes. But for those who like densely written, wildly stylish fiction that also has a point, from a writer at the top of his game, you *must* read this book!
Rating: 
Summary: awful
Review: This is one of the worst books I¡¦ve ever read. I could hardly wait to finish it. I thought the beginning especially had the hallmarks of ineptitude. I certainly wouldn¡¦t look forward to reading any of the author¡¦s other works. I have no regrets about giving this 1 star.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Writing, Nasty Humor, Dark Nihilism
Review: This is the first Amis I have read, although I know of as many people who love him as who hate him. There seems to be little middle ground with regard to Amis, and after reading this dense, maddening, brilliant, depressing little book, I can see why.The writing is breathtaking, simply breathtaking. Over and over I was brought up sharp by incredible descriptions, especially the startling juxtapositions that can only be described as poetry. Consider: "I strode through the meat eating genies of subway breath....I felt all the contention, the democracy, all the italics, in the air." Ah, this is New York. The prose is snappy and tough, the dialogue crisp and true, like Chandler rippling through self-deprecating angst by way of John Coover. And Amis's observations of the morally demented side of human nature are hysterical, wry, biting, and too damn close for comfort. By placing you inside the weak, repugnant, rapacious mind of John Self as the whining narrator, Amis manages to bury you in Self's self-pity while you try to recoil and distance yourself from his debauchment. You have to identify with Self if only because he is the narrator, but you hate the sound of Self in yourself. The book is more literary than it appears at first blush--note the more and more obvious allusions and references to Othello, although Self is no where near as noble in spirit as the betrayed Moor. No one sets up John Self but John Self--there is no Iago, other than his own greed, callowness, and inability to take charge of his own humanity. If I have any gripe with the story, it is that there are some things that are not well explored or fleshed out. There is a hint of unresolved sexual identity at the end--is Georgina really just a large woman, or a transsexual? Did Self give in to some nascent homosexual urges sprinkled throughout the story? Does Self exist at the end, or is this all merely a figment of Martin Amis's imagination--the Martin Amis who appears as a character in the novel, and who actually becomes a major player in this drama near the end. Amis teases us, especially with the frontpiece, but does not give enough to really go on. And he sets up Self as such a weak character with no insight that it is almost unfair. All in all, a tour de force of writing in service of a thoroughly depressing and disturbing story of moral and psychological dissolution. There is no character in this book to like, no one to identify with, and if you need to have a positive resolution or a character to make you feel good, avoid this like the plague. However, if you like great writing, nasty humor, standoffish irony, and dark nihilism, Money is for you.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious social satire
Review: This is the kind of novel Ilive for: intelligent and insightful, as well as being laugh out loud funny. John Self, the novel's narrator,lives a life of sheer, unadulterated decadence, jetting back and forth between New York and London (although the two cities merge over the course of the novel into a single depraved whole), attempting to put a film together, dealing with highly strung movie star charicatures, and all the while feeding his insatiable desire for junk food, alchohol, pornography and drugs.
What makes this novel work isn't the convoluted and sprawling story: it is the portrait drawn of nineteen eighties culture, the numerous and delightfully subtle jokes (Self drives an Italian car called a 'Fiasco', radically misinterprets Othello and various other incidents) and the worldview of Self himself who seems to serve as apair of eyes through which to satirize the decade and its attendent lifestlye trappings, never realizing that he himself epitomises all that is decadent and extraneous to the culture he inhabits.
Apart from Self, the other characters are less memorable, though no less humorous. Amis even incorporates a version of himself in the novel, symbolically taking a hand in the development (or not)of Self's movie project, and manipulating Self for his own ends in a similar fashion to most characters he meets. Perhaps the funniest thing about this novel is the way amis subjects Selfto so much humiliation and indignity: almosty as if amis attacks Eighties culture via satirising and bringing low Self.
This is a memorable and rewarding piece of work. Both as a comedy and as a aocial document it succeeds: although explicit scenes of sex and violence may put some off: be warned.
On the whole though a fantastic read for the thoughful and open minded reader.
Rating:
Summary: Finest thing he' ever written
Review: This is the Martin Amis to read if you're just reading one. I've probably read the darn thing seven times over the years, and will read it again. Whole scenes and chunks of dialog have lodged in my memory. Take any random paragraph from the book, and it jumps around like it's been hooked into a wall socket. It's astonishing to see this level of prose energy sustained over an entire book. I really think that, one way or another, writing this took something out of Amis that hasn't yet come back.
Rating:
Summary: Superb, absolutely SUPERB
Review: This was the first Martin Amis novel that I had read and now I know it will not be the last. The style of writing is so satisfying and refreshing. You ache for more when the book is finished and then return to your favourite sections to indulge in what to me is the best read I have had for years. The story is great and the issues raised are thoroughly interesting and very relevent. I found being a young man growing up in the same world as John Self very revealing. The appearance of a real-life character is most thought-provoking
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: What can you say. A high octane trip through the mad money-crazed world of the 1980s. Everyone's out for themselves, not giving a monkey's for anything, anyone or even themselves. And then comes the big payback when the whole thing's a cynical lie and you're nothing more than a little fish trying not to get eaten. It's a real world version of the US film, The Trueman Show - except no children would ever be allowed to watch and everyone is a loser. Five stars, just for the swearing.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and uncomprimising modern Lit
Review: With a good book, you finish it and then can't help but think for a time in the style of its narrater, kind of the way a melody gets stuck in your head. If you enjoy this kind of thing in the first person, then Money is it. Period. It is the holy grail of modern first person male narration. What I mean is its not only got a super narrative voice, but the fact that the character is such a disgusting pig of a man, paradoxically, serves to ingrain and reinforce Amis' own ultra sophisticated, chillingly refined authorial strategies, a gut bustingly funny tension the text itself actually then goes on to expose and discuss in depth. The thrust of the story is that John Self, 35 year old London based TV ad director, is in New York trying to get a film off the ground. An overly helpful young financier, one Fielding Goodney, is the reliable money man who believes in the project, and keeps pumping John with disconcertingly massive amounts of seemingly limitless cash. John, a creature of base addictions (porn, cigarettes, fast food, booze, prostitutes) spends the money as fast as Fielding can get it to him, and as a result is generally fall down drunk throughout the entire initial phases of film production. But oddly, the more out of it he gets, the more the money and potentialities seem to roll in and multiply: soon he's auditioning A list actors, doing promotions, considering plastic surgery. He's succeeding despite himself. The satire works both ways: what do we make of John, but also, what do we make of a New York City that caters directly to his every need and thrives on his energy? The cold thing about Money is how most of the main characters in operate in a kind of zero-self-consciousness way: if John has money, he spends it, and he spends it on booze and drugs. He doesn't think about it, its just a given. In the same way, John's "relationship" with his live in girlfriend is structured along hilariously simple supply/demand lines: John's demand for her always comes at a price - and this is, quite naturally, the way he likes it. John sees money as the ultimate democracy: everything has a price, and to John, since he's got money, this is a source of tremendous comfort. Of course there are things John can't buy, like education, sensibility, true love, and this is generates a consternation and weakness and doubt in him. Little does John know how much he stands to lose as a direct result of his disinterest in the things he can't buy. Can whatever you can't buy ultimately come back to hurt you? How so? Money takes all these ideas and runs them to hilarious extremes. One of the best things Amis has done.
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