Books: 60 second classics
What is it?
The Rachel Papers, by Martin Amis
What's it about?
Charles Highway, the over-educated, over-confident, over-sexed protagonist, is about to turn twenty, and on the evening before his birthday (which he sees as a major milestone - perhaps not the beginning of maturity, but certainly 'the end of youth'), he embarks on a retrospective of his life so far - a life that has largely revolved around his quest to sleep with an older woman: the Rachel of the title.
'Rachel Papers'?
Oh yes. Well, Charles being something of an intellectual control-freak, is prone to plan everything about his life in advance on paper, and keep files on everyone. His relationship with Rachel, therefore, is meticulously calculated in advance, right down to his chat-up lines and casual post-coital remarks: calculations he refers to as the 'Rachel papers'.
Is it any good?
Yes, surprisingly, given that Amis fils is usually far too preoccupied with irony and postmodernist cleverness to bother with anything so mundane as actual story. This is his first novel, though, before he hit the big time and disappeared up his own publicity, so that might explain it. Charles is irritating but at the same time painfully credible, and the whole thing develops with wit and assurance into a gripping read.