Success

by Martin Amis

Book Overview

InSuccessAmis pens a mismatched pair of foster brothers--one "a quivering condom of neurosis and ineptitude," the other a "bundle of contempt, vanity and stock-response"--in a single London flat. He binds them with ties of class hatred, sexual rivalry, and disappointed love, and throws in a disloyal girlfriend and a spectacularly unstable sister to create a modern-day Jacobean revenge comedy that soars with malicious poetry. From the Trade Paperback...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0517566494
• ISBN13: 9780517566497
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

an occasional masterpiece

Amis excells at playing nasty tricks on his readers, and "Success" is in many ways an emotional con game. As with all works of satire, the ultimate purpose of the novel is didactic. When "Success" works well (ie, when a reader is enough of a "sucker" to buy into Amis' conceit) it is a meditation on the ways we can be misled by pity, an audience-participation demonstration of the fallability of human sympathy. As such, it's a remarkably thought-provoking read.That said, the success of "Success" is largely based on reader manipulation. There are a number of reasons why Amis' technique might not work for a particular reader - for instance, if they are easily offended, or if they don't find Amis' brand of humor funny, or (and this is absolutely vital) if they don't share the sympathy-for-the-underdog and corresponding lack-of-sympathy-for-the-overdog mentality upon which Amis' experiment depends. Without an emotional investment from the reader, "Success" reads as a heartlessly empty comedy, rife with cliche, riddled with needless sexism, racism, and homophobia, and featuring characters unique only in their dislikability. Once transformed by the gullability of the reader, however, "Success" becomes a fascinating and enlightening study of contemporary human nature.

Terrific

In "Success", Martin Amis explores the lives of two foster brothers, giving voice to each over a January through December period in the 1980s. In the beginning, Gregory is a narcissistic and selfish aristocrat, a monster of a man but funny. Meanwhile, Terrence is a self-loathing and weak yob, a pathetic man who is funny in his futility. Then, these mirror image brothers brilliantly and persuasively assume each other's perspective, as Amis, over the 12 months of his narrative, probes beneath the face each brother presents to the world. As is usual with Martin Amis novels, "Success" is funny, bawdy, and entertaining, as well as weird. Like "The Information" and "Money", it is also brilliantly constructed and fully achieved. Hooray for Martin!

Essential Amis

'Success' contains all the familiar elements of an Amis novel: insightful and witty social observation, lashings of frequently explicit sex, impeccable structure and countless sublime and delightful examples of his sparse and anarchic prose. The novel concerns two foster brothers, one the prodigal son of an established upper class family, the other an orphan with a nightmare past, adopted by the same family in an act of misguided charity. The novel works as a paradigm for the changing of social structure in England: the boundaries between classes becoming blured, along with the occupations and pursuits normal to the members of these classes becoming more permeable.Despite the fact that the book is structured in a peculiar fashion, with each brother taking a turn at narrating the same events (along with all the contradictions and inconsistencies this would suggest), Amis injects a remarkable amount of comedy into the narrative, with much of the humour in fact springing from the books peculiar format. The descrpitions of the activities of Gregory Riding, all of his foppish aspects and our nagging intuition that he refrains from telling us the truth about his life are handled skillfully, while Terence Services character evokes sympathy and pity, but gradually disgust as the novel progresses and the roles are reversed, the effectiveness of the change reminding us of Amise's talent.Although not for the squeamish, this is an intelligent and enjoyable comic novel, with hints of very dark humour, which just about leaves us in thought about societys structure and how we should live our lives, which all good novels should.Reccommended.

Hilarious, intensely moving, gothic coming of age novel

There is in the life of every man a year which is entered as a confused adolescent and is ended either as an independent fully formed adult, or as a broken human being. Promise, as perceived by others, has very little to do with the outcome. Promise, as perceived by the adolescent himself is also not the determining factor. Amis argues that what ultimately forms the man is the ability to cope with adversity and choose the few avenues that lead somewhere (not necessarily somewhere special), rather than be side-tracked into a dead-end by the need for transient success.From the first sentence this book keeps the reader riveted and directly involved. Every one of the twelve chapters, one for each month of that formative year, consists of two parts, a first part in which Terry Service tells the reader what is going on in his life and a second part in which his foster brother Gregory Riding takes his turn. The two compete fiercely for the reader's approval and understanding. Terry, insecure and convinced that he is marked for failure, tries to avoid, or at least delay, the disaster he assumes to be his inevitable lot. He succeeds and makes it into a sustainable, if not particularly exciting adulthood. Gregory, ever the spoiled brat and outright psychopath, lies to and deceives everyone including himself until that inevitable moment when everything in his life unravels fast and he runs home only to be faced with his family's financial bankruptcy and his father's death. Murders, suicide and incest give a gothic aura to the tale, but then no one should underestimate the horrors of that metamorphosis whereby the adult human male is formed. Yet the whole thing is made bearable by the protagonists' remarkable sense of humor and by a healthy dose of cynicism and denial. In places the book is hilariously funny, Terry's dialogue with his penis, for one. In other places it is intensely moving, particularly when under all the sibling rivalry, deception and envy, we see traces of decency and ultimately of genuine affection between the two foster brothers.This is a marvelous book and one cannot fail but notice that it would make a great movie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Joaquin Phoenix were clearly meant to star as Gregory and Terry. But then, who in Hollywood takes my advice? END

A bitterly-funny tale of 2 rivals for Fortune's Hand.

Gregory Riding is perfect: rich, handsome, sophisticated, leading a storybook life of leisure, love, and taste. His foster brother Terry Service is the opposite: unattractive, dull, frustrated, stuck in a horrific dead-end job. But what begins as a clear contrast soon twists as Fortune's Wheel begins her inevitable spin: who will end up a Success? Amis writes in a deliciously funny pyrotechnic style and he is a master of the ironic plot twist that will leave you shaking your head and chuckling, even as you realize with horror just what you're laughing at. This is a hilarious parable by a master of form