Success

A modern-day Jacobean revenge comedy that soars with malicious poetry—from “the Mick Jagger of literature [and] the most dazzling prose stylist in post-war British fiction” (The Daily Telegraph). In Success Amis 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. In Success Amis 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 edition. Gregory Riding and Terry Service are foster brothers who loathe each other. For Gregory, London is a gilded galaxy, an endless whirl of smart parties, tony art galleries, and easy conquests. Terry's life is altogether more squalid, marred by a history of nagging sexual failures and missed opportunities. Inexplicably, success suddenly smiles on Terry as Gregory plunges to subterranean depths