The Information - Martin Amis

From the author of London Fields and Time's Arrow comes the story of Richard Tull, a novelist whose literary criticism is the only work to actually see publication. His life is not going well. Now, he has dedicated his life to screwing up the political aspirations of his best friend and bestselling novelist, Gwyn Barry. Fame, envy, lust, violence, intrigues literary and criminal--they're all here in The Information . How does one writer hurt another writer? This is the question novelist Richard Tull mills over, for his friend Gwyn Barry has become a darling of book buyers, award committees, and TV interviewers, even as Tull himself sinks deeper into the sub-basement of literary failure. The only way out of this predicament, Tull believes, is the plot the demise of Barry. With The Information , Amis delivers a portrait of middle-age realignment with more verbal felicity and unbridled reach than [anyone] since Tom Wolfe forged Bonfire of the Vanities .-- Houston Chronicle