The Rachel Papers

martin amis

In his uproarious first novel Martin Amis, author of the bestselling London Fields, gave us one of the most noxiously believable -- and curiously touching -- adolescents ever to sniffle and lust his way through the pages of contemporary fiction. On the brink of twenty, Charles High-way preps desultorily for Oxford, cheerfully loathes his father, and meticulously plots the seduction of a girl named Rachel -- a girl who sorely tests the mettle of his cynicism when he finds himself falling in love with her.

Genres fictionnovelscoming of agecontemporaryclassicsliteratureliterary fictionbritish literature20th centuryromance

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1973

Literary awards

somerset maugham award,

Places

london england,

This edition

Format: 224 pages, Paperback
Published: September 29, 1992 by Vintage
ISBN: 9780679734581
ASIN: 0679734589
Language: English

Characters More characters

Charles Highway

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Rachel Noyes

...

About the author

martin amis

Martin Amis was an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His works included the novels Money, London Fields and The Information.

The Guardian writes that "all his critics have noted what Kingsley Amis [his father] complained of as a 'terrible compulsive vividness in his style... that constant demonstrating of his command of English'; and it's true that the Amis-ness of Amis will be recognisable in any piece before he reaches his first full stop."

Amis's raw material is what he sees as the absurdity of the postmodern condition with its grotesque caricatures. He has thus sometimes been portrayed as the undisputed master of what the New York Times has called "the new unpleasantness."