My first read of Martin Amis, so I have little context to work with. This reminds me of Richard Yates. It's not a pretty book. Terrence is adopted into Gregory's family in his early teens after his father kills his sister. Well Gregory's family is pretty screwball too. There's no nobility to be found here. Sordid, bleak. The writing is quite masterful though. The book is a chapter per month, half of each chapter a monologue of Terrence, the other half of Gregory. The different perspectives play off of each other and shift as the months pass. The upper- vs. lower-class distinction is a constant theme. I've sort of straddled that divide myself over the years in various situations, so that part of the book felt very real. There is also a kind of parallel drawn, the shifting power dynamic between Terrence and Gregory as a mirror of the wider shift in society. Was there a wider shift in society? This would be 1970s Great Britain. Darned if I know! ( )

However strongly you may hope to find something redeeming in a protagonist, it’s not strong enough to find something redeeming here. A horrific cesspool of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism, with truly truly trigger-warning worthy, nightmare-stirring, scenes of rape, incest, and brutality.

If I never read of another man who is convinced that Womankind (or as Terry or Gregory might call us, c—-s and bitches) has conspired to never let him fuck again, it will be far too soon.

Success is a possum of a novel. Let me be specific, I don't mean a cute animated creature hamming along with a William Shatner voiceover: Rosebud. I mean the feral variety. Years ago I was leaving a cafe with some friends and turning on the headlights I was startled by a snarling possum glaring at me, threatening me with an ever painful and likely lethal gnawing. I am often bothered by that memory.

Amis bares his teeth in this one, a fifty-fifty approach to diverting fortunes. The narrative begins in a tone of excess, every action is hypertrophied beyond satire. There was a need to brace for impact. I became sad that I was going to hate this book. Then it abruptly congealed. The two characters Terry and Gregory changed orbits in that terrifying street scene of an early 1970s London. The novel screamed to its conclusion . There was a pause, I was nearly breathless. Amis brings a smirk to every page as well as our assured doom. I tend to think he means it.
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I hated this book. I could appreciate the quality of the writing and I'm definitely not one of those readers who has to "like" the characters in order to enjoy a novel. The two main characters, who are foster brothers and roommates (set in early 1970s), take turns narrating from a first-person POV and they address the reader as a witness to their tale. I liked the approach. But I just didn't care about either of them; their story wasn't compelling enough to override the hyper-adolescent-male obsession with getting laid and the accompanying extreme objectification of women (Gregory says about women "silly things, what do they think they are here for if not that?" -- meaning, for him to fuck -- and I use that word intentionally, as do Gregory and Terry. Repeatedly.). Life is too short to read things that outrage me without giving me something back.

I admit to not finishing it, so it may not be fair to rate it, but I'm doing so anyway. And I had to write something about my experience reading it. ( )