Thursday, June 23, 2005
Review: The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
Writing style: 8.1
Originality: 7.0
Plot: 7.2
Literary Merit(whatever that means): 7.5
Overall: 7.3
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It’s short (clocking in at ~220 pages), easy to read, and very funny. It is Martin Amis’ debut novel published in 1973 and the first book I’ve read by the author. I look forward to reading more because I really liked his style and I’m curious to see how it develops over the course of his career. I thought of it as sort of a British version of The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis because of the tone of the book, the age of the characters, the desiring and chasing after someone else, and the aimlessness of youth and it’s drug and sex culture (of course, The Rachel Papers was published first so maybe I should say that Rules reminds me of an American Rachel Papers). It’s a bildungsroman (the final chapter is actually called “Midnight: coming of age”) about a 20 year old male who “falls in love” with a girl named Rachel. The Rachel Papers refers to journal writings, notes, and stories that the main character, Charles Highway, writes about Rachel. It’s a pretty simple plot and maybe not that original of a message but it’s the way that the story is told that makes it so good, not to mention the humor. A good example of which is a scene where Rachel is at Charles apartment unexpectedly and he wants to seduce her:
I thought of saying, ‘Forgive me, I should like to be alone for a few moments,’ but what I in fact said was: ‘Hang on – just going to have a pee.’
Within two minutes I had sprayed my armpits, talc-ed my groin, hawked rigorously into the basin, straightened my bedcover, put the fire on, scattered LP covers and left-wing weeklies over the floor, thrown some chalky underpants and a cache of fetid socks actually out of the window, drawn the curtains, removed The Rachel Papers from my desk, and run upstairs again, not panting much.
‘Let’s… let’s go downstairs for a bit.’
Highly recommended for those of you that enjoy contemporary coming of age stories about hip, smart teens/twenty-somethings’ sexual escapades, disillusionment, and aimless wandering in search of purpose and meaning and whatnot.
Originality: 7.0
Plot: 7.2
Literary Merit(whatever that means): 7.5
Overall: 7.3
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It’s short (clocking in at ~220 pages), easy to read, and very funny. It is Martin Amis’ debut novel published in 1973 and the first book I’ve read by the author. I look forward to reading more because I really liked his style and I’m curious to see how it develops over the course of his career. I thought of it as sort of a British version of The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis because of the tone of the book, the age of the characters, the desiring and chasing after someone else, and the aimlessness of youth and it’s drug and sex culture (of course, The Rachel Papers was published first so maybe I should say that Rules reminds me of an American Rachel Papers). It’s a bildungsroman (the final chapter is actually called “Midnight: coming of age”) about a 20 year old male who “falls in love” with a girl named Rachel. The Rachel Papers refers to journal writings, notes, and stories that the main character, Charles Highway, writes about Rachel. It’s a pretty simple plot and maybe not that original of a message but it’s the way that the story is told that makes it so good, not to mention the humor. A good example of which is a scene where Rachel is at Charles apartment unexpectedly and he wants to seduce her:
I thought of saying, ‘Forgive me, I should like to be alone for a few moments,’ but what I in fact said was: ‘Hang on – just going to have a pee.’
Within two minutes I had sprayed my armpits, talc-ed my groin, hawked rigorously into the basin, straightened my bedcover, put the fire on, scattered LP covers and left-wing weeklies over the floor, thrown some chalky underpants and a cache of fetid socks actually out of the window, drawn the curtains, removed The Rachel Papers from my desk, and run upstairs again, not panting much.
‘Let’s… let’s go downstairs for a bit.’
Highly recommended for those of you that enjoy contemporary coming of age stories about hip, smart teens/twenty-somethings’ sexual escapades, disillusionment, and aimless wandering in search of purpose and meaning and whatnot.
