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Money: A Suicide Note (Penguin Modern Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Martin Amis
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £7.00
You Save: £1.99 (22%)
New (2) Used (11) from £1.75
Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 39398
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0141182393
EAN: 9780141182391
ASIN: 0141182393
Publication Date: February 3, 2000
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: 2000 edition, small crease on cover. Otherwise unread. From a smoke free home.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Wanton, fierce brilliance July 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My personal theory about Martin Amis is that he's a great writer in need of a great story. I think he doesn't often find one: so his extraordinary literary brilliance is just thrown out in showy flashes and sparks which glow fiercely and die instantly. It's his curse: impelled to write, lacking that great theme, what he writes seems to just invite these extremes of opinion. I don't know, I'm baffled by it - is it the whiff of nepotism? The casual, wrist-flicking brilliance of his prose with its aura of presumptuous arrogance? But eventually he stumbles upon something perfect: an actual story. "Money" feels as though he made a deal with the devil over this one, to everyone's benefit.
"Money" is an absolute classic, there's no doubt whatever. Amis has taken the temperature of the times - the early 80s - and set it down, searingly, brutally, on the printed page, where it hums, alive and fuming. I see him, writing this, like Mephistopheles himself, impish, awful, powerful. I think he felt, writing this, that you had better blow them all to hell: risk everything, to write at all. And I'm so glad he did: many years on this is still a powerhouse, still has something to tell us about humanity.
John Self is the 'hero' of this story: dividing his time between London and New York, "Money" tells the story of Self's journey from the TV small time to - perhaps - the movie big time. His rampant appetites, his friends, his lovers, his prospects, are unveiled in extraordinary and brilliant prose. It's funny, dark and very, very human.
Patrick Hamilton frequently gets compared to Dickens, but this is just as true of Amis: never mind the descriptive character names, I don't care about (or for) all that. John Self - yeah, yeah, I get it. It's not that - it's the eyes-peeled exploration of the grubby, nasty world around him; the ability to find the (black) humour in the grimmest of situations; the trough, the mire of hellish circumstances that Amis paints, that makes him like Dickens. I love listening in my head to his John Self: the awful lonesome midatlantic ex-glottal barking, the stone drunks and the mad panic tumblings to reality and the occasional dimly perceived insight; his mad advertising past, his pub dad, his porn addiction, his loaf-like body and his unforgettable, bruiser face. I love the slang John Self uses - hurls - at life: "mad rugs", flailing back in his costly, barely-running "Fiasco" to his "sock". It's made of brilliance, it assails you with brilliance. You come out a little scorched yourself - brief contact with life in Hell. But it's a hell full of fiery humour - you kind of like it there: your normal life, after "Money", is perhaps just a teensy bit dull.
John Self is a truly unforgettable hero. He's such an awful, awful man, his appetites so gross and needy - but he's so like you (all right, me?). He flails around and stumbles and falls like you, he does unforgiveable things and feels bad about it afterwards; he's rejected his past but hasn't embraced the new world he thinks he could be part of - he's not, of course; he never will be. I defy anyone not to pity Self just a little as he flails around the tennis court during his match with Fielding Goodney, or realises that he's messed up again with The Girl.
Having said all this, whatever you thought about "Money", forget it: read his semi-autobiographical "Experience" and I think you won't feel the same way about Amis again. It's moving and beautiful and brilliant all at the same time - a real story, and a real writer's work.
A savage funny monologue February 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a novel written in the early 80's and is one long monologue about money and what chasing money, having money( and not having money) does to John Self the central character. He is a successful Ad director but at heart a fast talking East end boozing womaniser addicted to fast food and porno. And if you still like him, he beats up women, tends to be a racist, and hates gays... and horror of horror smokes. But he does have a turbulent broth of family relationships to deal with!
This could be an echo of real life as Martin Amis had a troubled relationship with his father Kingsley Amis. Who incidentally was critical of the device of having the author as a character in the story which allows Martin to take some sly digs at the pretensions of writers and writing.
John Self meets a producer in New York and spins him a story based on his own life (drunkard father, two timing mother, time waster son) and is then embroiled in the nightmare of putting the money, script and casting together. He lurches between New York and London loving money and suffering from excesses of drink, food and sex and looses girlfriend, friends and family along the way in a glorious buffoon way.
As he tries to deal with actor's egos, money men demands and scripts he is also hounded by a stalker . Or is he? We can only understand what john understands and as he is drinking several bottles of whiskies on week long benders he is a little hazy some times on the details. During the story we get to find out what the truth of his rise to the Money as well as family secrets and who cheats who.
As the novel is set up to be a long suicide note you can sense the depths of his pain. So is this a gloomy, slash your wrist Leonard Cohen fun feast? No it's a very funny and savage satire on money, money and money and oh the film industry. Normally, I dislike first person novels but I strongly recommended this one.
A TRUE MORALIST October 30, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Martin Amis is the Jonathan Swift of our age. He exposes the inner corruption of self deceit and the lies that money brings. He brings a brilliant searchlight into the dark corners of our civilisation. A fearless prophet for our time: read his essays on Islamism.
 Relentless...and exhausting.... October 23, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Money is just exhausting to read.... It describes the main character's (John Self) self-destruction - his own relentless drive to descend deeper and deeper into a pit of his own filfth until he annihilates anything human about himself. John Self is one large pustulating festering boil of a human being, full of weakness, sadism, spite, bile and everything unpleasant you can think of.
Money is very gritty and grim and the characters are despicable - all of them: man and woman included. Even the author, who is also a character in the book, doesn't get off lightly!
As a book about the darker side of 1980s materialism it works well and it's certainly very compelling reading, but I felt kind of grubby whenever I put it down (which is probably the point...) and wouldn't call Money an enjoyable read and it certainly wasn't in the slightest bit uplifting.
It's clear when you read this book why Amis is considered a good writer. He has the ability to see straight through to the most repellent side of human nature and the technique to put it down on paper. However, I don't think I can stomach any more of his novels as I have a feeling that this is his style...!
This is definitely more of a bloke's book than a woman's.
 Very exuberant language July 11, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I chose to read this book as it was included in the recent Guardian list as one of the books best evoking the 1980s. And it had been sitting unread on a bookshelf for ages....
It's the story of John Self as he weaves his way through life, revelling in money, sex, alcohol and pornography. From a background in advertising he is caught up in plans to make a film in US but gradually falls foul of a financial scam and his world gradually falls apart. Very exuberant language - including some very evocative invented names for actors, fast food etc. Martin Amis appears as a character - this is done in a clever and intriguing way and not as an ego trip.
There are lots of literary references eg Otello the opera (Self get the plot wrong!) and a car called Iago. Reference to Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 also very funny. Most characters are venal and untrustworthy and the whole book is a mixture of darkness and hilarity.
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