A book about life, love, sex, friendship, death - and writing. This one is built around the same structural impulses as 'Experience', so don't expect a journey straight from A to B to C. Amis weaves his tale - and weaves is the operative word - and the result is captivating from start to finish. ( )

Name dropping about boozing with numerous anecdotized literary neon names aroused little or no self-detectable envy; it all seemed overly busy and more than a little tedious. On the other hand, self-congratulations at finding myself above said envy proved admittedly delicious. ( )

I heard a long radio interview with Amis a few months ago, and was left with the impression that this was a biography of his friendship with Christopher Hitchins; its not that. Its really a meditation on death and endings, that can be broadly cut into five overlapping pieces. He focuses on three end-of-life stories; that of Hitchens, a life that finishes too soon but at least was lived to the fullest, that of Philip Larkin, a life that ends at a similar age to Hitchens, but, Amis suggests, was hardly lived, and that of Saul Bellow, a life both long and fulfilled.

In addition, there is a long meditation - and this, I suppose, would be the "novel" component - on his (fictional?) relationship with a fictional girlfriend. And finally, various pieces of advice on the art of writing. These are actually pretty useful - I am aiming for Elegant Variation within this short review - but sit oddly within the overall structure

But the structure is odd anyway. If you call what looks like a memoir, or mainly a memoir, a "novel", but yet a novel peopled by Amis' well known circle of friends, family and cronies, you are going to get questions about what is real and what is not. I think Amis is perfectly within his rights to fictionalise, if indeed he has, conversations, anecdotes and scandals about that circle, especially now that they are gone. After all, how would we know, and its the writing that matters or at least contains its own truths. Similarly, if he wants to write a fantasy of an ex girlfriend, based on amalgam of experiences, we shouldn't bother ourselves trying to work out who is who and what happened and what did not. But its so tempting.....

Its not necessary to be familiar with the three writers he profiles; I have read no Bellow, little Larkin, but quite a lot of Hitchins. As might be expected, Hitchins' treatment is hagiographic, when realistically, his support of the Iraq War wore off much of his lustre and revealed him less as a contrarian than an attention seeker. Bellow is presented as the greatest modern American writer - someone who seemed to write "only for me" and I am in no position not to accept this. But Larkin is subject to a meanspirited attack for his lack of ability to have, what seem to Amis anyway, to be adequate sexual or emotional relationships, with his long deceased girlfriends pilloried as well. Which may well be true, but what's the point exactly?

In addition we get interesting diversions into Israel, Judaism, Fatherhood, his father and step mother, Nazi Germany, Nabokov and American culture. But mostly its about death and ending, Because you see, Amis now feels his own end nigh. This, he informs us, will be his last long piece of fiction. If it proves to be so, its a good note on which to finish, interestingly written and engrossing yet very self absorbed. ( )

Sometimes I get the feeling that Amis' perspective is limited for being so metropolitan and writerly. His world seems to have always been urban and highly educated. I miss a sense that this planet is full of people and plants and animals who do not see London or New York as the centre of the universe. Also I miss a sense of humility often - he seems sternly confident that his life has been a great success, and so have the lives of his coterie of highly articulate and well known buddies. Its also quite a rambling and formless book - as is life of course. With these reservations he's also often laugh-out-loud funny, highly eloquent and sometimes wise. So good company more or less. But there does seem a moral emptiness in his view of the universe - perhaps from my perspective in that he has no deep encounter with the spiritual dimensions of the biosphere we're all a part of. Still he's a significant writer and a probingly funny commentator on metropolitan human life.