Experience

This is a magnificent autobiography, a work of intricate self-portraiture that takes in everything from the author’s dental troubles, through his relationship with his father, to his reaction to his cousin’s murder. Amis’s comic energy and stylistic brio are on sizzling display throughout, but so are qualities that aren’t often associated with his fiction: gentleness, generosity, emotional vulnerability…

My favorite literary memoir of all time, filled with sentences that make you put down the book and applaud and insights that shake you to your core. It’s also a searching account of Amis’s relationship with his father, the novelist Kingsley Amis. Martin and Kingsley always loved each other, sometimes battled each other, and frequently envied each other. But the pure line of filial love Amis draws in the book will bring consolation to anyone who’s ever lost a parent.