Amis casts himself (in younger days) as Osric (the "water-fly" from Hamlet), which works quite well. While I do not doubt the pain that toothache can bring, a more self-aware man would have realised that this simply isn't dignified. Amis' prose is as per usual original and articulate, the emotion can be felt with each passing sentence.

Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. The brief mention of the peculiar living arrangement of the last years (Kingsley's ex-wife (Martin's mum) and her husband moved in with him) typifies Martin's approach to many of the "controversial" pieces in the book: readers of newspaper-articles on this book learn more about the arrangement than they do in the book itself. The record is a much more complicated thing and it is unlikely that a principal actor could set it straight: he's been too involved in contorting it all along (unintentionally or not). On his two good friends Saul Bellow, also a mentor, and Christopher Hitchens: "I am not [Bellow's:] son, of course.He skips over his stint at Oxford with ease, while tripping endlessly through discussions of his dental work. Amis does not 'deal with' or build a motif around this issue, but simply discloses it - it comes to light, but remains a shadow over their family's sense of stability and predictability - all things are incomprehensible, as experience itself when it happens - and life is only a continual contemplation of incomprehensible and incongruous experience. In fact, Martin handles these scenes particularly well, but there is just too little information for those who aren't in the know. While he was supposed to be studying for the notoriously difficult entrance exam, he squandered his time and money pursuing a relationship with his crush, Rachel. There are a few foci: dear old Dad (noted novelist Kingsley Amis), the disappearance of Amis' cousin Lucy Partington in 1973 and the discovery, decades later, of her grisly fate (she was brutally murdered by a man responsible for many similar despicable crimes), and Amis' 'orrible teeth (and their expensive replacements).

He is no longer "the kid", as Bellow puts it to him after the death of father Kingsley in 1995, and this generational shift is sharply in evidence within the quietly smouldering pages of Experience. A pesar de su dramática o triste historia, no se que vida no es triste, el libro es divertidísimo, juro que pase del llanto en un párrafo a la carcajada en el siguiente párrafo, literalmente. I said afterwards that this was sinister balls, and Christopher, whether or not he agreed (he was, of course, much more pro-union than I was), certainly seemed to be taken by the phrase.Also floating around to provide an air of mystery and tragedy is the murder of Martin’s first cousin, Lucy Partington, by one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers. He was erratic, self-centered, opinionated, and loud, believing that these traits were useful in establishing himself as a modern Renaissance man. Whereas you do have a conversation (you have an intense argument) with Herzog, with Henderson, with Humboldt, frowning, nodding, withholding, qualifying, objecting, conceding - and smiling, smiling first with reluctant admiration, then smiling with unreluctant admiration. novels are (among other things): not almanacs of your waking life but messages from your unconscious history", but unfortunately he seems to think that memoirs are almanacs of your waking life; Experience often seems less a traditional memoir than a notebook, an accretion of jottings and extended marginalia.

The voice doesn’t help – that interminable transatlantic drawl with its considered hesitations and self-important emphases. The autobiography -- which is funny, sad, moving and absolutely riveting -- is a complex piece of layering, and incorporates a substantial overview (or underview) of his father's life and work.

Google his name or one of his books, and you will find an endless resource of Amis-bashing from broadsheets to boobrags. Amis does his best to save her from the posthumous epitaph of helpless victim – in particular refuting Fred’s heinous tale that she wanted to introduce him to her parents - and to tell us about who she was and why he hopes, and believes, when darker thoughts enter his mind, that it was all over quickly for her. This is not My Life and Loves - rather a pity in a way, but perhaps that will be the subject of a further volume of autobiography? However, it’s impossible to deny that he was a witty old bugger and there are some genuinely laugh out loud lines.

John Banville, too, writing in the Irish Times, was filled with admiration: "Page for page, it is probably the best piece of prose you are likely to read this year.There are themes that reoccur, there are dramatis personae who reappear, but in the main it’s a series of vignettes – some more comic than others.