Experience is the perfect literary memoir in that Amis to combines his own first hand experience of some of the key literary figures of his generation with a style of writing that is beautifully lyrical and brilliantly funny and acerbic. Most strikingly for me, as somebody who enjoys and admires his fiction but has always found it lacking in the moral and emotional weight which tends to characterize great writing, this completes the picture and puts him at the forefront of his generation of writers: it is an incredibly moving and thought provoking autobiography using as its pivots the murder of his cousin by Frederic West, his discovery of a daughter he didn't know he possessed but who he comes to embrace and ultimately the death of his father. To temper what is at times grueling reading, he prefaces each chapter with a letter home to his father and stepmother whilst at boarding school and his crammer in Brighton which shows what an infuriatingly cocky and precocious child he was: very funny indeed. Useful to read alongside Night Train, which is another indicator that he is more than a mere stylist.

Ruth King - 03/05/2012 Report this Review

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