Who hasn't seen photos of a stunned lottery winner posing with an oversized check and wondered how those riches will change their lives? Now imagine that the bemused winner is a congenital criminal in a grimy industrial suburb of London and you can begin to grasp the comic possibilities of Martin Amis's 13th novel, Lionel Asbo: State of England.
Lionel--who changed his name to "Asbo" in honor of his frequent encounters with England's Anti-Social Behaviour Orders--works in the "very hairiest end of debt collection," making his rounds with a pair of pit bulls that will figure prominently in the novel's terrifying climax. After Desmond's mother dies, Lionel becomes his nephew's unofficial guardian. While Lionel is serving one of his frequent brief prison terms, Des fills out a lottery ticket for his uncle that wins £139 million.
It doesn't take long for the "Lotto Lout," as the British tabloids dub Lionel, to ensconce himself in a gothic mansion with a girlfriend whose obsessions are cosmetic surgery and bad poetry. Deploying his accomplished satirical gifts with surgical skill, Amis delivers a grimly humorous portrayal of life among lower-class Britons alongside an equally incisive glimpse of the perils of undeserved celebrity.
If Lionel Asbo merely were the story of one dubious character's mishaps after coming into unearned riches, it would be amusing enough. But Amis is also concerned with the complex relationship between Lionel and Desmond, and through them the sometimes inexplicable bonds that tie family members to each other and the ways we can love against all our better instincts. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer