I haven't read Amis in ages, and I don't know what possessed me to pick this one up. I found it quite similar to, but not as off-putting as, Dead Babies. What, the upper classes of England are a bit weird, a bit separate, a bit above it all?
Amis's notion of success here is pretty feeble, barely encompassing sex and expensive conspicuous consumption. Posing, in other words. No character in this novel does anything much at all, each being purely in thrall to their empty inner lives. This indeed might be Amis's point, but it hardly seems worth revisiting now.