Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cannot believe people have slated this fantastic book!!!, 15 Sep 2003
I'm not an unswerving Amis fan - there are definitely longeurs in many of his longer novels and his use of repetition and stereotyping sometimes fall flat i.m.h.o.- but this is an amazingly tight, verbally dextrous masterpiece. Neither Gregory or Terry's voices are meant to be taken 100% literally, or as giving the direct views of Martin Amis - we're inside their minds, with all the misconceptions, prejudices and self-delusions they're burdened with. The differences between what these two unreliable narrators report about events, places and conversations are pointed and revealing, and while for much of the book we see them as grotesques, this is in fact how they view themselves, the reports of their own inner voices, and they are not static characters but evolve throughout. What I love about this work, apart from Amis's dazzling powers of originality in language, and Gregory's masterclass in snobbery, is that by the (hugely poignant) ending the reader's sympathies and expectations have been completely and expertly warped round. Anyone looking for a comforting, intellectually bankrupt, politically correct read that's chewing gum for the mind need not pick this up - but if you want to cackle out loud and be challenged and amazed by a master of language then get stuck in at once.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A small Gem...., 26 Jan 2005
I read this book a few years ago, and have just picked it up again.It really is rather good. London is portrayed wonderfully, its grime, its perculiarities, its downright strangeness (I am currently suffering withdrawal systomes, being based on the Cote d'Azur, so this is especially appealing to me). The writing is sharp, it's funny, it's just plain good. Amis disects the British class system with painfully accuracy. I would recommend the novel 'Money' to anyone who enjoyed 'success'. I may be going 'tonto'... As Keith Talent might say... 'Nice Darts'.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Criminally Undrerrated Classic from the Genuius of BritLit, 29 Jul 2001
Martin Amis's "Success" is a brilliant and witty examination of the urban male psyche. Told over the space of one year in dual narrative, by adoptive brothers, Amis's story constructs a London in miniature where sex is either everything and nothing, or nothing and everything, depending on who you are. The same going for money, and indeed Success itself. This novel is Amis at his best -- fatally trenchant, compassionate, scared, hungover and humorously alive. There are Amis novels that are undoubtedly a load of rubbish (Rachel Papers, Dead Babies, Other People), but Success is wonderful.
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