Martin Amis - Money

I have just finished reading 'Money' by Martin Amis, something which took me a while to finally borrow from the library - but I'm glad I did. Like other novels of his I have read, I don't think it's ending is particularly striking, but I guess that leaves you to think about what he's trying to tell you.

This is a great novel about capitalism and the concsumer lifestyle, finding money, losing it being subject to it completely. His protagonist John self jets from New York to London eating, smoking, drinking, taking pills and women whenenver he feels like it.

It's pretty good for laughs as well, some of the funnier stuff I will leave out for the sake of holding back obscenities, but it has its fair share of thought provokers.

Nice one, Mr Amis, I can see why this one cemented your career - must have taken a lot of blood, sweat, tears - and cash - to do so.

Some extracts that made me laugh in public/think for a bit....

"Yeah," I said and started smoking another cigarette. Unless I inform you otherwise, I'm always smoking another cigarette.

When you go to work everyday, you aren't really living. In some ways it must be a great relief. Really living - now that's hard graft, that's nine-to-five stuff (it's like going to work everyday).

We are stomped and roughed up and peed on and slammed against the wall by money.

If we all downed tools and joined hands for ten minutes and stopped believing in money, then money would no longer exist. We never will, of course. Maybe money is the great conspiracy, the great fiction. The great addiction too: we're all addicted to it and we can't break the habit now. There's not even anything very twentieth century about it, excpet the disposition. You just can't kick it, that junk, even if you want to. You can't get the money monkey off your back.