I Want It Now cover art

I Want It Now

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I Want It Now

By: Kingsley Amis
Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

The quickest way to get rich is to marry someone rich, but how do you do this if you aren't yet rich? TV chat-show host Ronnie Appleyard is preoccupied with this question as he pursues wealthy heiress Simona Quick over two continents in the company of braying aristocrats, Greek shipping magnates, American dandies and the dreaded mother-in-law to be. But as he comes closer to his prize other questions present themselves. Is the androgenous Simona really worth it? Why doesn't she like sex? Is it possible to drink all day? With his unerring eye for absurdity and class satire Kingsley Amis shows us what happens when money meets naked ambition.

© Kingsley Amis 2012 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

 Classics Witty

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Critic reviews

Brings all the earlier works into focus. Amis is still master of the comedy of irrelevance. The novel is funny because it is serious. It is also wonderfully readable
Wickedly entertaining
All stars
Most relevant
Amoral bloke pursues awful but rich girl in three countries. There's not a single sympathetic character and his interest in her is unfathomable once we know he's no longer after her money. It's all presented from Ronnie's point of view except, rather oddly, two brief dips into the minds of two very minor characters, Bill Hamer and the butler. If them, why not the secret thoughts of Ronnie's girl Simona, or her mother Lady Baldock?
The narrator, while pleasant of voice, is either lazy or unable to see ahead, frequently ruining the sense of a sentence by stressing it all wrong. This happens too often to be forgivable in a professional reader. He also seems to think that South Shields is somewhere in Wales, judging by the slight accent he gives Hamer. His voice for Simona also rankles, especially at the start, when it's almost laughable.
Still, it's a minor KA work, as are most of them when you think about it, so perhaps I'm being excessively picky. And it does contain some typical, enjoyable, choice, effortless, KA put-downs.

Thin stuff really

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Wasn't expecting this from old Kingers. Rom Com? Utterly butterly silly, but quite amusing bum.

Rom Com

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... at this problem novel. Neither Simona nor Jenny (was it?) in 'Take a Girl Like You' works, for me anyway; it's not as if Amis couldn't cope with women characters - Christine in Jim and Brenda in Jake are well written. And all that sex stuff is so dated and boring. A good listen, though.

A good try ...

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