Success (novel)

Success is Martin Amis's third novel, published in 1978 by Jonathan Cape.

Success

First UK edition
Author	Martin Amis
Country	England
Language	English
Publisher	Knopf (US) Jonathan Cape (UK)
Publication date	1978
Preceded by	Dead Babies
Followed by	Other People

Plot

Success tells the story of two foster brothers—Terence Service and Gregory Riding, narrating alternate sections—and their exchange of position during one calendar year as each slips towards, and away from, success.

Themes

Success is Amis's first statement of the doppelganger theme that would also preoccupy the novels Money, London Fields, and, especially, 1995's The Information.

Reception

Success was widely praised upon publication. The Guardian observed that "Gregory and Terry double the narrative in a way that makes Martin Amis's Success like a kind of two-way mirror"; critic Norman Shrapnel praised the novel's "icy wit" and called the narrative approach "artfully appropriate...[it] builds up an air of profound unreliabiity—entirely fitting, since things are by no means what they seem."[1] In The Observer, critic Anthony Thwaite called the book "a moral homily from which all traces of morality have been removed with the brisk surgery of a razor blade on a fingernail...Success is a terrifying, painfully funny, Swiftian exercise in moral disgust; its exhilarating unpleasantness puts it alongside 'A Modest Proposal'."[2] Critic Hermione Lee observed, "After Martin Amis's Success ... sibling rivalry seems almost as popular as sexual warfare, fictionally speaking."[3] In December 1978, The Observer named Success one of its "Books of the Year."[4]

Further reading

• Bentley, Nick (2014). Martin Amis (Writers and Their Work). Northcote House Publishing Ltd.

• Diedrick, James (2004). Understanding Martin Amis (Understanding Contemporary British Literature). University of South Carolina Press.

• Finney, Brian (2013). Martin Amis (Routledge Guides to Literature). Routledge.

• Keulks, Gavin (2003). Father and Son: Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, and the British Novel Since 1950. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299192105.

• Keulks, Gavin (ed) (2006). Martin Amis: Postmodernism and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0230008304.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)

• Tredall, Nicolas (2000). The Fiction of Martin Amis (Readers' Guides to Essential Criticism). Palgrave Macmillan.

• Bradford, Richard (November 2012). Martin Amis: The Biography. Pegasus. ISBN 978-1605983851.

References

1. Norman Shrapnel, The Guardian, "Smooth or Scary", 13 April 1978.
2. Anthony Thwaite, The Observer, "Sour Smell of Success", 16 April 1978.
3. Hermione Lee, The Observer, "Brotherly Lusts", 26 November 1978.
4. The Observer, "Books of the Year", 17 December 1978.