The weakness of this latest novel is especially telling, since its basic premise—a thuggish lout wins the lottery and is able to indulge his vulgar appetites on the grandest scale—might once have provoked Mr. Amis to grand flights of inventive disgust.
As a teenager, I saw Jack Rosenthal’s brilliant play about Viv Nicholson, who in 1961 won £152,319 (equivalent to more than £3million now) on the football pools, and announced that she intended to ‘spend, spend, spend’.
