SOURCE: "Discussions of Recent Books: A Black Comedy of Manners," in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 72, No. 3, Summer, 1996, pp. 561-64.

In the following negative review, Ward faults The Information, saying it "does not have a plot, it has predicaments and events." He also declares that "none of the characters in The Information comes close to being sympathetic."

On its publication Martin Amis's The Information threatened to be avalanched by the various English literary and celebrity controversies of which its author was the lightning rod. Amis having his teeth fixed; Amis changing his agent thereby losing his friendship with author Julian Barnes who is the husband of Amis's now ex-agent; Amis hiring an American agent (nicknamed "The Jackal"!) and getting too much money for his next book(s); Amis divorcing; Amis generally getting too big for his britches; etc., etc. All this extra-literary brouhaha, which brawled over into the...