Synopses & Reviews
A biting, hilarious look at one man's relentless pursuit of pleasure.
John Self, one of London's top directors of commercials, is in New York making his first feature film alternately titled Good Money and Bad Money. He is also living money, talking money, and spending money on all the excesses twentieth-century culture has to offer: drink, dope, sex, fast food, and love. After several weeks of major degeneracy, he beats a retreat to London in an attempt to fathom what is going on in his wretched life, only to confront new temptations and new terrors.
Martin Amis describes Self's low life in high style. His shocking, funny, and on-target portraits of life in the fast lane form an audacious and frightening picture of Reagan's America and Thatcher's England.
Review
"A sprawling, fierce, vulgar display, full of Amis's quirky but articulate energy. Self is a complex and superbly imagined character." The New Republic
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"Money is exhilarating, skillful, savvy." The Times Literary Supplement (U.K.)
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"Though it sprawls a bit, Money achieves a roiling, raunchy idiom that is exuberantly tuned to a contemporary beat, consummately literate and fun to read." Publishers Weekly
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"[A]n old-fashioned cautionary tale got up as a swinging, funny, indecent, up-to-the-minute anti-novel....There is no plot only various motivating tricks, some of which are not clear until the final pages." The New Yorker
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"Money is short on plot. But it's long on verbal energy and an almost exuberant misanthropy....There's no self-knowledge but lots of grim laughs in the pathetic set of actors and actresses Self casts and rehearses for his would-be movie." Newsweek
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"Money is...one of funniest novels I've read since Amis senior's Lucky Jim." James Atlas, Vogue