Martin Amis's first novel, The Rachel Papers, tells the story of Charles Highway and his relationship with his girlfriend in the year before going to university.
Charles Highway, a bright, egotistical Oxford student and soon-to-be Great Novelist, spends the eve of his twentieth birthday reflecting on his adolescence--at times stimulating, often embarrassing, and never nearly as debauched as he'd have liked.
Until he meets Rachel Noyes, an elusive, unattainable, manic pixie mystery of a girl whom Charles quickly becomes entranced by. He meticulously draws up battle plans and strategies for how to seduce Rachel, and thus the "Rachel Papers" are born.
Unflinchingly honest, comedically brilliant, and unapologetically original, Martin Amis's first novel, The Rachel Papers, is a masterful account of the passion and fickleness of first lust--and love.
Editor @People Special Editions; recovering politics editor • food, theater, TK writer 📖 https://t.co/Wohfz8Yohk • feminist • squawking like a pink monkey bird.
This is going to be fun. Just finished ep. 1 “The Rachel Papers.” (Read it while a student in London the year the film came out; felt about it much how @parul_sehgal did but didn’t know it at the time.) https://twitter.com/zinoman/status/1522579952670941184
Dan Kois is a writer, editor, and podcaster.
Our debut episode is about Martin Amis’ own debut, 1973’s The Rachel Papers, published when Amis was just 24. How did this sweaty teen sex grotesque, from the son of Britain’s most controversial novelist, launch a career? https://t.co/ZZIU4K4ioJ https://t.co/C8ivSle6nM