The Rachel Papers

In Amis's first novel, he gives 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 Highway 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 in love with her.