The Rachel Papers

Just finished reading Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers. He was just 22 or some such obscene age when he wrote it (it was his first novel) -- and the mere thought fills me with rage and self-loathing. But that’s a rant for another blog. Amis is a brilliant stylist, something that’s evident even in this very early work, narrated in the first person by the precocious, irreverent 19-year-old Charles Highway who shares his thoughts on life, family, sex and Oxford (not necessarily in that order) and tries to make sense of his relationship with a girl named Rachel.

The humour is very wry, very deadpan, so much so that I’m sure I missed some of it. Though it sometimes teeters on the edge of being too-clever, it’s disarming and, for the most part, genuinely funny.

Example:
At that moment the double doors swung open and Mr Greenchurch strolled grandly in.
"Churls!"
He wasn’t reproaching us, merely calling out my name in his senile yodel.

Can’t say I give it an unqualified endorsement; some passages were vague and just didn’t hold my interest.To be honest, I was in speed-reading mode through much of the first half; it’s hard to focus on the task at hand when I’m simultaneously worrying about the six dozen or so as-yet-unread books rustling their pages plaintively at me from a corner of the bed. I also had occasional trouble with the 1970s Brit slang.