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E-Verse Top 100 Cool Novels #86: The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

by Ernie on 18/03/08 at 9:17 am

Number 86 on our top 100 countdown: The Rachel Papers, Martin Amis (1973). This is a precocious, sly, and maddeningly provocative debut by the son of England’s greatest immediately postwar novelists, Kingsley (see the entry for Lucky Jim). The Rachel Papers features a wonderfully light, dexterous touch in its first-person descriptions of an intelligent young literary man attempting to rewrite and organize his own pre-Oxford life (most notably sex life) in an incredibly complex private journal. There are bits clearly intended to inspire a wince (fetching a used condom out of the trash to reuse, so that a girlfriend will not suspect that he only minutes before used the last condom with another woman). It’s a hell of a funny, and supremely ironic look at coming-of-age in the early 1970s, when the social whirlwinds of the 1960s were beginning to rain debris down on the generation immediately following. It also heralds the arrival of a major British novelist who has successfully moved out from the long shadow cast by his beloved and successful father.

Ernie

Ernest Hilbert is founder of E-Verse Radio.

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