Money : A Suicide Note

Synopsis: This is the story of John Self, consumer extraordinaire. Rolling around New York and London, he makes deals, spends wildly and does reckless movie-world business, all the while grabbing everything he can to sate his massive appetites: alcohol, tobacco, pills, pornography, a mountain of junk food and more. Ceaselessly inventive and thrillingly savage, this is a tale of life lived without restraint; of money, the terrible things it can do and the disasters it can precipitate.

Review: This book is truly filthy, my ears were blushing as I listened (I'm sure it made it worse to listen .. there was just no escape .. the words just came blaring out of my headphones.) Having said that I don't know if I would have ploughed on with it if I'd been reading it. It's a great big book of sleaze.

This is a searing, cynical look at life in the 1980's for the rich and successful John Self. John is an ad director who is now working on his first feature film. He spends his time between London and New York basically indulging in all the worst habits of the rich and privileged ... booze, drugs, porn and fast food, it's all so seedy that you feel quite grubby reading it but the story is laced with deep, deep sarcasm and irony. Amis is having a pop at celebdom here and the Hollywood film industry in particular and he doesn't pull his punches. John is killing himself with his excesses, he knows it, but he just can't help himself, he binges and indulges to the point of saturation. He behaves abominably and so does everyone around him, there is nothing or no-one that can't be bought with money. John has a number of friends (or more accurately hangers on) who are palpably only interested in him because of his success, they are shallower than a puddle, but the lifestyle is just too addictive and John is in deep. He veers between self loathing and self justification, sometimes believing he can pull himself back from the brink sometimes revelling in his hedonistic lifestyle.

It's a very funny book in a dark sort of way, hilarious at times and also totally cringeworthy (awful toe curling scenes between John and his father's girlfriend who shows him her centrefold pictures) but it's also a bit depressing, probably because it's just so repellent, it made me feel physically sick as John wallowed around too boozed up to function properly doing irreversible damage to his health (he's obese, with rotting teeth, tinnitus and a dodgy heart) and being mysogynistic. There is a point in the story where you feel he might just turn it all around and, though he isn't really likeable in any way, you're hoping that he will (though the sub-title is a bit of a giveaway.)

Amis is a really clever writer and there are moments of sheer genius, John's ramblings are the best part, he gets all the good lines and I loved his sarcasm. I quite liked the way Amis wrote himself in as a character, the ordinary fairly sensible writer who John asks to write the screenplay .. he sort of sees John in the same way as we do, a bit appalled by his lifestyle, wishing he would change but not being at all surprised when he doesn't. I also liked the way in which various people tried to rehabilitate John by getting him to read proper books (something other than porn in other words.)

Not a book to be lent to anyone of a nervous disposition and not for those who are easily offended ... definitely don't lend it to your gran/mum/neighbour .. not unless they are fairly broad minded with their reading choices.

It's clever (sometimes just a bit too clever) and I can see that Amis is a really accomplished satirist .. it's just that I didn't particularly enjoy listening all that much .. after all, as someone or the other said, 'young ladies are delicate plants.'

Despite the fact that it made me blush from the knees upwards, Stephen Pacey's narration is sensational.