false761683051758516297805175851603210The Informationhttp://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178131554m/761683.jpg
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/761683.The_Information
11337Martin Amis10961116041falseThu Feb 05 01:30:30 -0800 2009Tue Mar 03 14:18:14 -0800 2009 But...
But 'The Information' is basically a spectacular failure. Excuse the boiled-down Headline News of a review, but 'The Information' is exactly a very very good novel that fails to lift off into the ether of greatness. Sounds like a failure that anybody could live with but the problem is that 'The Information' should have been great, it's basically sitting there on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral with all signs go, but...
'The Information', for all the dark creativity of its writing, for as much as I gained from it and enjoyed it a a reader, is, as a plot-driven novel, totally monotone. The gallows humor, the theme of envy-- envy thrills but kills, envy is the succubus or whatever-- the protagonist's horrible bad luck, the recurring migraine jokes, and the way everything, everything, everything backfires--it's all good and executed to perfection, but the story itself just never kicks in. Should a 'story arc' really be expected from a novel of this quality? Maybe not. Problem is, 'The Information' actually promises a kick ass story. Just doesn't deliver.
To finish on the positive note that this novel so thoroughly deserves, I kept thinking of Frantzen's 'The Corrections' as I read 'The Information.' Frantzen failed in a stupid, overblown way that made me want to throw the damn book across the room. Instead Amis fails with so much wild humanity that I was constantly chuckling or holding back some other real emotion as I was clutching the book to my chest.