Rachel Papers

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.

The narrator of Martin Amis's uproarious first novel is at once a cynical lecher and an abject victim of puppy love--one of the most believable and curiously touching adolescents ever to lust and sniffle his way through the pages of contemporary fiction. New York calls The Rachel Papers "the best teenage sex novel since Goodbye Columbus."

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.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Martin Amis carried the nickname of enfante terrible of British literature far past his youthful debut at 24. His novels focus on excesses -- drugs, sex, money -- prompting Christopher Buckley to note in The New York Times in 1995 that his terrain is the junkyard of the human psyche and Mr. Amis is his generation s top literary dog.