Inside Story by Martin Amis

I have read and loved everything written by the late Elizabeth Jane Howard including the wonderful Cazelet Chronicles. I knew that she had been Martin Amis’s stepmother from 1965 to 1983 so I was interested in reading his autobiography Experience, when it came out in 2000. That was a fascinating book    but having read it so long ago I can’t recall much of the detail except for the shocking story of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who disappeared without trace in 1973 and whose remains were found in the basement of the monstrous Frederick West twenty years later. I do remember being absorbed in his stories of his life and thinking it a thoroughly satisfying read.

Inside Story is quite different to Experience. Well, of course, it is twenty years later but it is different in the way it is written. On the cover it is called a novel and I think the reason is so much of the book is about conversations which can’t be reproduced verbatim so scenes are set up by Martin in the first person but are then enacted by Martin in the third person. Names are changed as well which I guess allows him to tell stories from his view as he has remembered them. I mean I’m sure Phoebe Phelps can’t be the real name of the woman he devotes so many pages to about their five year on-off affair.

The deep and loving friendship between Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens is a constant theme throughout the book as is his love and admiration for Saul Bellow. He is devoted to his wife and children and appears to have cast off  the dirty little devil image of his younger days.

I would like to quote one sentence which I liked: ‘The twelve year hiatus - beginning on November 9, 1989, with the abdication of Communism - the great lull, the vacuum of apparent enemylessness (during which America could cosily devote a year to Monica Lewinski and another year to O J Simpson), came to an end on September 11, 2001.’  I liked that word: enemylessness. This is a long book with lots of footnotes and it takes quite a while to read, especially since there is so much in it that asks to be re-read. 

I think 5 out of 5, if you have the time and a quiet space.

Published by Jonathan Cape.