Success, which was published in the UK in 1978 though not available in the US until 1987, is Martin Amis’ third novel. It’s two overlapping stories of one year each in the lives of adoptive brothers Gregory Riding and Terry Service. Child Terry was adopted by the wealthy Ridings after his father killed his sister (he was found hiding in the house a week later). Gregory and Terry now live together in Gregory’s considerable flat in Bayswater. The novel is divided into month long chapters, each chapter giving one section to each man which he narrates in the first person. This structure allows Amis to give two accounts of, for instance, one conversation about an alluring girl named Jan (or is it Joan?). The slightly gimmicky contrast in play at the novel’s opening is between Gregory’s brilliant successes—his sexual conquests, his sinecure at an art gallery in Mayfair, his sprezzatura in dress and his “expensive green car”—and Terry’s frustrations in all those areas. It’s been a difficult time for Terry, who confides that he has “exhausted my stock of old girlfriends,” and can’t find any game new girls. He’s losing his hair and works in a sales office like a “cramped honeycomb of round wooden telephone-booths” among desperate colleagues, with rumors of “rationalization” (layoffs) going around. But Gregory has his problems too. His father Henry Riding, whose caprice was behind Terry’s adoption, might be going dotty, and so too his sister Ursula, “delicious, vague, sleepy-eyed Ursula”, with whom Gregory has some taboo-breaking history. The green car often malfunctions. Mr. and Mrs. Styles the gallery owners harass him, or so he claims. He’s something of a fibber, which we and Terry are in a good position to find out.
© 2024 Kaz
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