I will try to do a summary: it is a very obtuse book about a would-be film director, John Self, who is obsessed by money and the power it has over his life. He uses it to manipulate people, and it manipulates him by keeping him in the bad habits he has accumulated over the years. A vacuous personality addled by drink and pornography he wanders from one crisis to another slowly losing his grip until the pattern of his new found success finally reveals its horrid trap.

A very open mind as it contains graphic content and the protagonist is not exactly likable, at all.

I did like the 'plot' and the way it was told; it drew me in and a less original style would've probably stopped me reading on. The brilliant descriptions, though I don't pretend to understand all of the references, brought London especially to life with its original weather and grimy streets. The imaginative names and placenames, which almost infect the book completely, captured my attention.
The references to you, the reader, as you are reading it were quite amusing and not done too often to seem ridiculous. It made it seem like John Self was speaking confidentially to me and telling me, as I read, what kind of person I was to be reading this book. His judgements were mostly true!

The protagonist was horrible, but in spite of myself I wanted to know what happened to him. If I had the misfortune to meet him I would run screaming in the other direction, as fast as I could.
Some of it was a little bit of a test and I don't know if I got every little nuance and reference, but once you get used to the style you tend to inhabit the book at full throttle.
The last bit of the book disappointed me a little because it was a little bit of a mish-mash after the speed of the story before, but on refelection, it probably suited the progress of John Self's ruined life.

Read some other Martin Amis books, and I have just bought 'Other People'.

A little depressed because it seemed a little hopeless even with the slight upturn in his 'fortunes' towards the end. You just know he's just going to get back on the rollercoaster and take his interchangeable women with him.

He appears several times in the book and I don't know if it added anything or not, whether it was a self-parody or the needed voice of reason, the sane one explaining things towards the end, but he only stuck around because he was hired to. Money-you see.

It's different but nasty.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of Money (Penguin Modern Classics)   from Amazon.Com!

Created Nov 09, 2004 at 12:18pm • Submit your own review...