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The Moronic Inferno
The Moronic Inferno
Nov 25, 2025 9:35 PM

Author:Martin Amis

The Moronic Inferno

At the age of ten, when Martin Amis spent a year in Princeton, New Jersey, he was excited and frightened by America. As an adult he has approached that confusing country from many arresting angles, and interviewed its literati, filmmakers, thinkers, opinion makers, leaders and crackpots with characteristic discernment and wit.

Included in a gallery of Great American Novelists are Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Joseph Heller, William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Paul Theroux, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. Amis also takes us to Dallas, where presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is attempting to liaise with born-again Christians. We glimpse the beau monde of Palm Beach, where each couple tries to out-Gatsby the other, and examine the case of Claus von Bulow. Steven Spielberg gets a visit, as does Brian de Palma, whom Amis asks why his films make no sense, and Hugh Hefner's sybaritic fortress and sanitised image are penetrated.

There can be little that escapes the eye of Martin Amis when his curiosity leads him to a subject, and America has found in him a superlative chronicler.

Reviews

Martin Amis's America is funny and horrific

—— The Times

Perceptive, witty and felicitously written... A terrific book

—— Frank Kermode , London Review of Books

He writes brilliantly on novels and novelists. He has a laser-keen eye and an enviable descriptive power, using words with great originality and precision

—— Sunday Telegraph

As a foreign journalist-cum-essayist on America, Mr Amis has no equal

—— The Economist

An hilarious look at life as a single mum. Wickedly funny, warm and wonderfully perceptive, it's great for those long, cold, dark winter nights

—— Peterborough Evening Telegraph

An amazing story

—— Vanessa Feltz, BBC London

Literate chick-lit ... Jayne Buxton is a funny writer who knows that humour is in the detail

—— Boston Globe

This is one that you won't want to miss - a wonderful debut novel

—— Armchair Interviews.com

Intelligent chick-lit ... This laugh-out-loud debut will captivate readers

—— Publishers Weekly

This debut novel is a fresh, thoroughly enjoyable read

—— Sarah Broadhurst

Wonderfully comic and touching

—— Sunday Telegraph

Interweaves a variety of thoroughly imagined life stories and predicaments with quiet, effective skill

—— Mail on Sunday

I have greater admiration for Margaret Forster than for most novelists. A very fine, continuously interesting, and often moving work, all the better because it is so firmly rooted in the ordinary world of everyday experience

—— Scotsman

Cadwalladr also captures the desperation at the heart of most good comedy. She maintains the tragicomic balance to the end and has the confidence to chose the right, realistic ending over the wrong, romantic one

—— The Observer/Review

A hilariously funny and moving chronical of three generations of the Monroe family told through the eyes of Rebecca in the 1970s. It is not just a habit of quoting proverbs and a recipe for sherry trifle that have passed down the maternal line. There's a habit of broken marriages, dubiously fathered children and untimely deaths.

—— Elite

Rebecca Monroe is really stumped when it comes to her family's behaviour. Why, on the day Charles and Camilla got married, did her mum lock herself in the loo and refuse to come out? Was it due to the collapse of her chocolate cake, or because Rebecca's grandmother ended up marrying her first cousin?

Pondering what it is that makes her clan click, Rebecca is determined to discover whether it is genes or fate that affects the different generations.

A fun little romp about the joys of family and the genes we inherit.

—— OK Met Stars

Touching and surprising...A moving account of the personal and social pressures that shape our childhood experiences and resonate throughout out lives

—— The Sunday Times

This exciting first novel by a talented writer is a moving exploration of family life in the twenty-first century...You won't want to put this book down

—— My Weekly

Hilariously funny and moving chronicle of three generations

—— Peterborough Evening News
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