SOURCE: Lowry, Elizabeth. “The Man Who Would Put Out to Sea on a Bathmat.” London Review of Books 22, no. 19 (5 October 2000): 13-14.

In the following review, Lowry discusses the themes of love and economy in Economy of the Unlost and Autobiography of Red, commenting that both volumes are “musings on the exigencies of human greed and need.”

I am going to end up talking about love, but let me start by talking about money. Money, as Marx tells us, is the enemy of mankind and social bonds. ‘If you suppose man to be man and his relation to be a human one,’ he writes, ‘then you can only exchange love for love, trust for trust.’ Money, on the other hand, ‘changes fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, slave into master, master into slave, stupidity into wisdom, wisdom into stupidity. It...