I hated the twist at the end, but enjoyed most of the rest of it. The characters in particular were excellently drawn, and the narrative was fun to read.

This was ok. There were moments of linguistic flourish that I quite enjoyed, but I think I was mainly just kinda bored a lot of the time. Innit.

it's a very writer-ly book, but a good read nonetheless. bleak. but still good.

I finally finished this book. Hooray!!!

Actually, it had some really good parts. I learned a lot about darts. The relationship between an author and his or her characters was painted in a really novel and interesting way. The parts of the story about the story were clever, as was the brief section describing the USA. There were many really effective images. And it was funny... Clever- funny.

But.

It struggled to hold my attention. I put it down without meaning to and didn't feel compelled to pick it up again. Eventually I plodded through it all, but it took a long time.


Good, but ...

While Goodreads obliges me to assign a star rating, the rating system is a completely inadequate way to judge a book like this. I was alternately riveted, disgusted, bored, disgusted again, and finally felt compelled to the finish, having read three hundred fifty of its four hundred seventy pages. Throughout, my most consistent question for the author was “Who hurt you?” Amis is lavishly talented, but his book is so sour, so full of hate and bile—for women in particular, although he doesn’t seem to hold men in high regard either. He delights in offending. Amis makes each of his characters repellent and then delivers rough justice in forceful, surprising prose full of cleverness and melody, which is only occasionally indecipherable. The book is too long for his plot, baggy in places although his writing rarely flags. Recommended if you need a clever, very well-written grotesque that makes you uncomfortable throughout, but check for trigger warnings, as this is chock full of trauma-inducing acts of every flavor.

Really enjoyed this one, it works on several levels. It's a good story, but it's really about the unreliability of the written word, plus it's basically a meta-Dostoevsky's-The-Idiot.

But because it's a good story first and foremost, you can read it without worrying too much about the latter elements, and think about them when/if you want to.

I docked it a star because a couple of times it felt like Amis got a little discursive Pynchon-envy, but wasn't strong enough to really pull it off. The book would have been better if a few of those elemnts had been struck.

Unnecessarily lengthy novel immersed in inadequate prose that is choked by it's own construction.
Oh...btw...i did like [b:Money|18825|Money|Martin Amis|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1297100735s/18825.jpg|85999].

3.5

I didn't get this book. In fact, I purposely left it behind when I moved once. I would like to reread it now, though, to see if it would make more sense to me.