The Rachel Papers (Paperback) by Martin Amis

from mahallett

i don't enjoy ma any more. he just seems so unpleasant. so i wasn't expecting to like this. but i did. he captured being 20 and being so self focused. being in love at noon and out of it by 6

from stillatim

Is this great literature? No. But I did really like it. It should sit next to Rabbit, Run and Portnoy's Complaint, but with the benefit of being much, much better written than the first, and more interesting than the second. Also, compared to 'Dead Babies,' which was my first M. Amis read, this i...

from RandyMetcalfe

Charles Highway is approaching his twentieth birthday. All too soon his teenage years will come to a close. But there are yet things to be done: he must study for and write the entrance exams for Oxford, compose a bitingly cruel letter of rebuke to his philandering father, dissipate in London (th...

from setnahkt

Amis is the son of English author Kingsley Amis (who, famously, never read any of his son's books); this probably makes them the most talented father-son literary pair in history (Alexandre Dumas pere and fils perhaps running a distant second). Amis' fiction tends to be dark and quirky; I've read...

from Eyejaybee

A decidedly unpleasant novel - I felt that I needed a shower after reading this. Published in 1973 this book recounts Charles Highway's attempts to sleep with an older woman, the Racherl of the title, before his twentieth birthday. Great scope there, of course, for a touching and amusing "coming ...