I've given up trying to defend Martin Amis books. I tend to agree with every criticism that people offer, but to me they've missed the point. He's so wonderful to read because he has more technical mastery than any writer of the last fifty years that I've read. He can make his prose, and consequently his characters, do absolutely anything he likes.

As this is his first novel the pyrotechnics are somewhat muted, making it probably one of his more accessible novels. He has focused a bit more on characterisation, creating Charles Highway, who can stand as the equal of any of the unpleasant young men of literature in my opinion. He's at once detestable and forgivable, and he's instantly recognisable to anyone who's ever anticipated the sexual act with equal measures of dread and excitement, or felt an odd pleasure at coughing up a livid green lump of mucus.

If you've never read Martin Amis, or ever wondered what goes on in the head of self-involved young men, this is a good place to start. ( )

The reviewers who complain that they don't like the protagonist grossly miss the point of literature. All of the critiques of the protagonist's character - that he's narcissistic, disgusting, immature - are valid, but you don't need to like or identify with him. It's an interesting portrait of a post-teenager and all of the self-delusions and skewed perspectives that contains. ( )

I was given this book as a freebie by a cashier at Waterstones a few years ago as I had bought quite a few books (I feel a return trip happening soon). It was part of a promotion. Those who purchased Lionel Asbo got it for free and it is marked up as not for resale. I didn't buy Lionel Asbo but it was chucked into my bag with a cheeky wink. I had previous read Money which I enjoyed and so I grabbed this off the bookcase the other night.

The book focuses around Charles Highway and his attempts at seducing a girl called Rachel who is older than him. He is quite a snotty nosed character but endearing in a really odd way. I wouldn't say he is pleasant at all but there is a certain charm about him. 'The Rachel Papers' are a collection of reports he compiles along the way on his successes and failures in his seduction. It turns out that he has a similar dossier on all of his potential and successful conquests.

At about 220 pages this isn't a long book and I could easily have read it in a day had I been so inclined. I found myself laughing out loud at a few parts but I must warn potential readers that the language is very vulgar at points. This didn't bother me and I found the language actually fitted the character perfectly, unlike similar attempts by authors such as Bret Easton Ellis. ( )

It is hard not to compare The Rachel Papers, Martin Amis's debut novel, to Lucky Jim, the best and best-known work by his famous father, Kingsley Amis. Both, after all, are novels of disillusionment, with Jim Dixon finding that academia is rife with petty politics that take away from the fulfilling life of the mind he once envisioned, while Charles Highway, the protagonist of The Rachel Papers, seduces and then discards a slightly older woman by the name of Rachel, concluding that she is not a suitable match for him. That, however, is where the comparison should end, for The Rachel Papers is a critical parody not only of Lucky Jim, but of a whole subgenre of writing about youth and its illusions. This kind of novel is ripe for caricature precisely because its features have hardened into a recognizable set of clichés: the uncouth but lovable narrator, for instance, whose rough exterior is a defense mechanism in response to the perceived injustices of the world.

While there are numerous novels that fall into this subgenre, two in particular stand out in the period preceding The Rachel Papers: Lucky Jim, as I have already mentioned, and The Catcher in the Rye. Amis never mentions the latter directly, but Charles does say on several occasions that he has been "reading a lot of American fiction," and it is not a long shot to suggest that Rachel's on-again, off-again American boyfriend DeForest has echoes of Holden Caulfield. For Martin Amis, the disjunction between tough exterior and sympathetic core is ripe for critique. The implication is that we, as readers, see past these defense mechanisms in order to perceive that, beneath the angry countenance they present to the world, characters like Holden Caulfield and Jim Dixon are really romantics, misled into unhappiness by a mixture of cynicism and bad faith. Amis sees this gesture as encouraging a falsely sentimental view of youth, one that overlooks its stupidity and capacity for narcissism.

Charles Highway is the antidote to such mawkish sentimentality. Seeing the imminent arrival of his twentieth birthday as the entrance point into maturity, Charles sets out to make the most of his remaining time as a teenager. He moves from his family's home to live with his sister, Jenny, and her boorish husband, Norman, in order to attend a school designed to help him get into Oxford University. Central to his farewell to his youth is his desire to sleep with an Older Woman, and that is where Rachel comes into the picture. Not that Charles is desperate to lose his virginity - indeed, he already has a more-than-willing casual partner in Gloria, and the reader discovers that he has had sex with several other women, often followed by painful bouts of sexually transmitted diseases. But the seduction of Rachel is presented as a meaningful Goal, an encounter with an Older Woman, experienced and knowledgeable. Of course, the issue of Rachel's age turns out to be farcical, since she is barely older than Charles, turning twenty herself during the course of their brief affair.

The Rachel Papers is an unpleasant read (what book by Amis isn't?), but this horribleness is strategic. Amis takes aim at every sentimental preconception we might have about his youthful protagonist, emphasizing in particular the vulgarity of Charles's body as he spits ("hawks"), leaks, squeezes, and vomits his way through the story. Charles is apparently not squeamish about any taboos, revealing his incestuous feelings toward his sister, for example, sniffing Rachel's dirty underwear, and theorizing calmly that, based on his tastes and level of sensitivity, he "ought" to be homosexual, thus turning his enthusiasm for women itself into a kind of perversion. Amis shuts down any avenue for seeing his protagonist as a misunderstood romantic: from his sexual behavior to his intellectual pursuits, the reader has the sense that Charles knows exactly what he is doing and how revolting he really is.

The one remaining illusion for Charles seems to be that life will change once he becomes an adult, an assumption that seems to come true when, in his Oxford interview, the professor neatly pulls apart the contradictions and intellectual misappropriations in Charles's arguments about which no one had previously dared to challenge him. But even Prof. Knowd's incisive assessment of Charles's abilities and shortcomings does not represent real maturity, but instead a sort of advanced pissing contest that suggests adulthood is a complicated continuation of, rather than a genuine break from, the immaturity of youth. The Rachel Papers is at its best when its focus is on this intellectual context. In recent interviews, Amis himself has said that the main shortcoming he sees when reflecting back on his debut novel is how awkwardly the plot unfolds. The novel does meander along at times, and there were moments when I thought that this book would have made a better short story - tighter and more focused - than a full-length novel. I can't say that I loved The Rachel Papers, but my own experience has been that it has provided much food for thought, and that, rather than pure entertainment, is the sign of good fiction. ( )

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 (though admittedly in the basement of his sister’s house), bring his sardonic wrath down upon the history of literature, and oh, sleep with an older woman. Rachel, two months his senior, is his choice. And just as his does with his exam prep, his letter to his father, his personal chronicle of his dissipation, Charles has a dossier on Rachel, a battle plan, if you will, that will ensure his conquest. Well, maybe.

Charles may be nineteen but his angst-ridden sexual single-mindedness makes him seem more like an emotionally stunted younger teen. As though the various medical conditions that delayed his education also retarded his psychological growth. But his scatter-gun disdain is telling, especially when he ends up being its target, which is often the case. He knows that he is ridiculous, but then so is the world around him and everyone in it. The irony is that when he isn’t self-consciously an ass, he is an attentive lover capable of real emotional connection. But only up to the point of realization. Then he seems determined to crush out any honest emotion like the dregs of a cigarette.

The writing here is deceptive. Charles is not sympathetic. And even when he lets his mask slip, it’s difficult to have any emotional investment in his plight. Amis’ writing absolutely delights in Charles’ self-loathing. As Charles writes in one of his exam papers, there is a “meretricious exaltation of verbal play over real feeling.” Amis knows precisely what he is doing and is completely willing to skewer himself in the process. It is a first novel that announces that more and greater things are bound to come from this writer (and they do). After a slow start, it entirely won me over at least to an appreciation of Amis’ much-touted skill.

Recommended. ( )