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The Rachel Papers

3.56 of 5 stars 3.56 · rating details · 3,282 ratings · 219 reviews

In his uproarious first novel Martin Amis, author of the bestselling London Fields, gave 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 High-way preps desultorily for Oxford, cheerfully loathes his father, and meticulously plots the...more

Paperback, 240 pages

Published September 29th 1992 by Vintage (first published 1973)

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Jul 30, 2007 Clare rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: teenagers, post teenagers, people experiencing a mid-life crisis who need to be persuaded out of it

This is a bit of a curate's egg of a reading experience. I began finding Charles Highway's escapades mildly amusing, took a detour into down and out hatred of vacuous Rachel and odious Charles and ended up in a state of turbulent hilarity. This is basically a book about being a teenage boy - obsessed with phlegm, spunk and pulling girls. At times Highway is intensly dislikeable - like wading through a teenage boy's room in fact - but he is undeniably fascinating. However, the prize for most disl...more

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Oct 24, 2011 TD rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

**Spoilers. But then you shouldn't be reading...**

The Critics' Critic

Prompted by Vintage's suggested pairing of Amis's debut novel with Fielding's 'Tom Jones' under the irresistible epithet of 'Vinatge Lust', the latter author's canonical novel has remained at the back of my mind while reading 'The Rachel Papers'. And it isn't long before, amid the myriad literary references clogging narrator Charles Highway's monologue, we are treated to a direct reference to Fielding;

"The section [...] , I now...more

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Sep 12, 2012 Myfanwy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Should this be renamed? I'm thinking Portrait of the Artist as a Young Horny Man? Charles Highway is an absolute little shit and yet he is endearing and I enjoyed my time with him (even when it was gross). Everything he does, he does for experience and for an opportunity to write about it. At least this is what he tells himself. I would guess, too, that everything he does, he does in hopes of feeling real emotion, thereby breaks the boundaries of his class and family.

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Dec 12, 2012 Jonfaith rated it 5 of 5 stars

If Philip Roth is correct and life is misunderstanding people, then I remain awed by the riddle which is Martin Amis. His first novel The Rachel Papers injects self-awareness into satire, leaking a fecund foam which changes everything about how we regard the way we live now. The insecurity of adolescence is illustrated by our protagonist, one Charles Highway, who diagrams said angst and provides cross-references from the literary canon. One can imagine the reader or protagonsit saying bugger Hol...more

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Oct 11, 2007 Callie rated it 2 of 5 stars

So I had a really difficult time finishing this book. Several times I wanted to quit reading it, but I honestly hate stopping a book when I'm half way through. I think my big mistake with this one was seeing the terribly made 80's film adaptation prior to reading the book. Man, was that one terrible film.
Second mistake, was that I couldn't stand the main character, Charles Highway, rather I LOATHED him. What a horribly self-centered, obnoxious, womanizing, vile protagonist.
And, yeah, I get that...more

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Aug 19, 2008 R. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2007

Painfully realistic at points; so much so, that I envision Martin Amis as Charles Highway.

But not young Martin Amis. The present-day Martin Amis.

Which makes it kind of a Lolita experience; a middle-aged guy trying to seduce a young lady before his __th/__nd/__rd birthday.

The text is kind enough to remind me, without elegant variation, that Charles is 19, and tomorrow he'll be 20. When this happens, the prop handlers slop a mop-top on 55-year-old Martin, but it doesn't stay on long and usually...more

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Jan 01, 2013 Hannah Wingfield rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Often as I read The Rachel Papers I thought “I have no idea how I am going to blog about this once I’ve finished” – which I suppose is the measure of a good book, one that leaves you not knowing what to think. I was inspired to read it as a lot of reviews for Joe Dunthorne’s Submarine (one of the best books I read last year and the first I blogged about here [link]) cited the two novels as being similar. There are some parallels between them, notably their usage of a male teenage antihero as a p...more

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Nov 08, 2012 Litro Magazine added it

Charles Highway, the protagonist of Martin Amis’ first novel, The Rachel Papers, is not the most likeable character. He is self-aware, self-involved and self-important; his “papers” detail meticulous plans to win the affections of Rachel and get into Oxford University, all the while constantly reflecting on “how fucking clever” he is.

But despite his obvious narcissistic downfalls, I found myself frequently sympathising with Charles. The Rachel Papers is all a bit meta; our narrator structures hi...more Charles Highway, the protagonist of Martin Amis’ first novel, The Rachel Papers, is not the most likeable character. He is self-aware, self-involved and self-important; his “papers” detail meticulous plans to win the affections of Rachel and get into Oxford University, all the while constantly reflecting on “how fucking clever” he is.

But despite his obvious narcissistic downfalls, I found myself frequently sympathising with Charles. The Rachel Papers is all a bit meta; our narrator structures his life around the literary greats (“I know what it’s supposed to be like, I’ve read my Lawrence”) and struggles to articulate genuine feelings when things stray out of this romanticised framework. From arranging his books to casually exude intellectualism, or reciting T. S. Eliot to delay orgasm, no action is devoid of cultural significance.

The Rachel Papers is—partially, at least—about being a writer and buying into the pervasive myth that true creativity belongs to troubled geniuses. The subsequent pressure to make life worthy of documentation causes Charles to long for something heart-wrenching to occur:

"The thing is that I am a member of that sad, ever-dwindling minority… the child of an unbroken home. I have carried this albatross since the age of eleven, when I started grammar school. Not a day would pass without somebody I knew turning out to be adopted or illegitimate […] How I envied their excuses for introspection, their ear-marked receptacles for every just antagonism and noble loyalty."

But by insisting on viewing ordinariness as an encumbrance and grading every encounter in terms of storytelling value, Charles becomes hard to decipher. He treats his relationship with Rachel as a kind of social experiment in what love entails: berating her for letting her façade of femininity slip in a “Celia shits” incident; having sex with another girl minutes before she arrives and reusing the condom; treating intimacy as a list of moves to be ticked off (“I completed a really very complicated set of manoeuvres. It featured, among other things, the worrying of her hip-bone with my elbow, stroking her eyelashes, and kissing her ears”). Charles wants Rachel to be exceptional—the subject of a Shakespearean sonnet, the Juliet to his Romeo—but, unsurprisingly, she can’t live up to the heights of his expectation.

But despite Charles’ emotions being constantly “catalogued and filed away” for analysis, moments of unscripted vulnerability do occur, even though you get the impression that Charles is oblivious to this reality. He grows to like Rachel for who she is rather than the idea of her (“Goodness me, I really did like her”) and seems genuinely upset by his father’s infidelity. Perhaps most poignant is when he shares a moment with his sister, commenting: “We had both wanted to talk, I think; I don’t know why we didn’t.” This almost-there type of authenticity recurs throughout the novel. Charles nearly says something important, but opts to say what he thinks he should instead. But that’s kind of the point: The Rachel Papers is a portrait of someone young, selfish and absorbed by the idea of cultural brilliance, which completely informs the way the story is told.

For all its unappealing characters and overwrought encounters, The Rachel Papers is told in a hilarious and astutely observed manner; I particularly enjoyed the description of Rachel doing a “Walt Disney shiver”. It’s perhaps not the literary masterpiece Charles—and even Amis—is striving for, but it’s a brilliant debut novel that, for all its hopelessly contemplative reflections, is strangely touching.(less)

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Jul 02, 2012 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Martin Amis' Charles Highway is no child molester, nor is Amis himself on par with Vladimir Nabokov. But this book -- I hate to say it -- aroused in me a contempt and admiration similar to that I felt while reading "Lolita."

Highway is a rather filthy (sometimes literally) cad who just begins to become likable when he pulls his squirmiest acts of all. His so-called love for Rachel is fleeting and shallow, and his meditations on relationships are compelling but not so much so that we forget he's...more

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May 05, 2012 Nenia Campbell rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: x-1970s, adult-books-of-the-non-xxx-variety, reviewed, repulsive-protagonist, why-is-this-a-classic, island-of-hype, hipstercrack, literachore

taking the term 'coming of age' to a literal and rather crude meaning...

there's something amiss about amis. exhibitionism isn't supposed to be quite so snarky - or amusing. in fact, i began to wonder if i might perhaps be a voyeur.

charles is an utter creep. amis does for the 1970s what nick hornby did for the 1990s with high fidelity, except instead of sounding like the male version of bridget jones, charles sounds more like an adolescent mish-mash of holden caulfield from catcher in the rye and...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Troy Parfitt rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Rachel Papers was my first Martin Amis novel and I liked it enough that I would read Amis again, most definitely. People say his subsequent efforts, such as Money and London Fields, are brilliant, and based on this book – published (if my math is right) when the author was 24 – I imagine they are. What a talent to write that well at that age. In terms of style and ability, it reads like a novel penned by someone twice as old.

The story (a narrative told on the day before the protagonist’s 20...more The Rachel Papers was my first Martin Amis novel and I liked it enough that I would read Amis again, most definitely. People say his subsequent efforts, such as Money and London Fields, are brilliant, and based on this book – published (if my math is right) when the author was 24 – I imagine they are. What a talent to write that well at that age. In terms of style and ability, it reads like a novel penned by someone twice as old.

The story (a narrative told on the day before the protagonist’s 20th birthday, recounting the previous pre-university year) revolves around Charles Highway and his “first love” Rachel, though it’s unclear if Charles really loves Rachel (or anything, or anyone, besides perhaps William Blake). Charles, you see, isn’t a very nice person. He is an exceptionally bright and an exceptionally egomaniacal and shallow 19 year old. He lies, he manipulates; he’s cold. But he knows he’s not a nice fellow (indeed, he tells you precisely why), so this articulate candour makes for humour, and the book is really funny in places. And it’s that can’t-see-it-coming humour, the best kind. I particularly liked the line (after some confessional about some inadequacy or personal issue) ‘My heart really went out to me there.’ It’s an interesting premise for a first-person narrative; Charles is effectively saying, “I’m a worm, and here’s why I’m a worm.”

The only problem I had with the book is that it is a sort of literary teen romance – very literary in places, but very teen romance in others. It made me think back to those zit-concerned, first girlfriend days: sneaking around behind parents’ backs, thinking “oldsters” were quite lame, and all that jazz – but at times it came across as too teen-edition-Harlequin-romance. I didn’t really need a description of fumbling for buttons or a step by step through opening a condom package (well maybe one, but not two or three). You get to an age where reading about that kind of thing loses appeal. But what else could a 24 year old have written about?

The character Kevin, Charles’s bother-in-law, is priceless – endless comedy, certainly based on a real person. Kevin is a kitchen-sitting, booze guzzling, card playing lout who likes to indulge Charles in banal conversation or locker-room talk about his sister (and Charles doesn’t seem to mind because he admits he thinks his sister is hot!). Kevin’s not a very nice person either, so he and Charles (or so Kevin thinks) seem to have a connection.

I wonder what Martin Amis thinks of this book. It was written in 1973, and Amis has since gone on to become a literary giant. Most writers wish their first couple of efforts would disappear.
I thought The Rachel Papers was a good read. I imagine twenty-somethings with good taste in literature (and a sense of humour) would find it a great one.

Troy Parfitt, author of Why China Will Never Rule the World

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Jan 21, 2012 Tfitoby rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lit

For a book about a teenager supposedly coming of age, written nigh on 40 years ago and read by me rapidly approaching my 30th birthday; this was possibly not the best combination to get the most from the controversial debut novel from famed misogynist Martin Amis. The only thing worse could possibly have been if I were female I suppose.

A quite enjoyable read but not as depraved or as entertaining as I had been previously led to believe. Charles Highway is a quite wonderful character, the type th...more

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Aug 18, 2011 Laura Rittenhouse rated it 4 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I'm a huge Martin Amis fan. I just love his writing style.

This book is narrated by a teenage boy who is spending the last day of his 19th year reflecting on life, love and anticipating adulthood. For him, it's all changing at midnight. When he's 20, he'll be grown up.

The Rachel Papers of the title are a collection of notes (volumes of them) kept by the narrator about his first love, Rachel, and their relationship (or his striving to create one). The book relies heavily on these when...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Justin Evans rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Is this great literature? No. But I did really like it. It should sit next to Rabbit, Run and Portnoy's Complaint, but with the benefit of being much, much better written than the first, and more interesting than the second. Also, compared to 'Dead Babies,' which was my first M. Amis read, this is much less datedly 'shocking.' Reading DB was a bit like listening to a teenager with green-dyed hair talking about how much she's subverting Them. Kind of cute, but also more than a bit tragic. I didn'...more

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Aug 17, 2010 Judith rated it 2 of 5 stars

Ugh! How embarrassing for Mr. Amis to have this book still around in print now that he is middle-aged and a very serious successful writer. What, I wonder, does he tell his children when they confront him with this adolescent "Portnoy's Complaint" meets "Catcher in the Rye" in London? Dirty socks, dirty underwear, pimples, phlegm, STD, re-used condoms, vomit, etc., etc. are major players in this book.

Why did I read it? Because I was about to get on a plane and had nothing else to read; because...more

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Jun 27, 2010 Kristen rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, own

I usually don't review books I don't finish. That's not fair. But I attempted this one twice, the second time on an airplane where I finally resorted to reading the inflight magazine instead. I kept waiting to find it hilarious and brilliant based on its reputation and even more so the reputation of its author, but it just never happened. At least not in the first half. The characters were all either loathsome or colorless. There was way too much on bodily fluids. This is a 19 year old, not a 12...more

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May 03, 2009 Elaine rated it 1 of 5 stars

If this catalogue of insensitivity, venereal infections, Machiavellian manipulations, two-timings (perhaps even with the same condom, fished by way of urgent necessity out of the wastepaper basket), and sordid preoccupations is an authentic insight into the mindset of a reasonably intelligent late-adolescent boy, it's way too much revelation for me. More than once during the reading of it, I had the horror-stricken thought, "My god, if I ever have a kid and its a boy, it might grow up into one o...more

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Dec 07, 2009 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Charles Highway is a Rick Ocasek-looking, luggie horking, father-hating-for-unspecified-reasons, asthmatic on the cusp of his 20th birthday, which he is taking, like most things, very seriously. He spends the hour leading up to midnight of the big day, which he refers to as the end of his youth, revisiting his relationship with Rachel. This is easy, as Charles Highway has kept detailed notes on their time together, all while simultaneously creating a personal guidebook called "Conquests and Tech...more Charles Highway is a Rick Ocasek-looking, luggie horking, father-hating-for-unspecified-reasons, asthmatic on the cusp of his 20th birthday, which he is taking, like most things, very seriously. He spends the hour leading up to midnight of the big day, which he refers to as the end of his youth, revisiting his relationship with Rachel. This is easy, as Charles Highway has kept detailed notes on their time together, all while simultaneously creating a personal guidebook called "Conquests and Techniques: A Synthesis."

Martin Amis does this so well, creating a character so unlikable that if you met Charles Highway in real life you'd induce a brain spasm from over-using your eye rolling muscles. Amis takes that loathsome protagonist in his first novel, "The Rachel Papers," and turns it all into a very witty story.

Charles is staying with his sister and her abusive husband while he prepares to apply for admission to Oxford. He's got a girl Gloria who stops by for all sorts of floor routine antics, which are given play-by-play treatment. "What did I feel for her?" He wonders one morning. "Ambiguous lust, genial condescension, and gratitude. It didn't seem enough."

He meets Rachel by offending her at a party, taking her on a date, not calling her, then giving it another go a week or so later. She's a tough sell, with an American boyfriend always orbiting her. Charles plots ways to make headway: He visits a museum they play to go to, plots profound statements he can say while standing near a window that delivers a specific light. He does the same with movies. He manufactures all sorts of tortured emotions, and soon enough he's got her in his bed.

Things with Rachel don't last long.

Not much happens in this short novel covering an equally short amount of time. It's a lot of listening to the pretentious ramblings of a teenager who is trying to mold his life to look and sound certain ways. Certain books left open to certain pages, and the album on the front of the pile is deliberate. But every minute in Charles Highway's head is funny and ridiculous, although treated so seriously. Like a caricature who believes he is an illustration.

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Oct 25, 2012 Ronald Beasley rated it 3 of 5 stars

'Believable' is the most accurate word Amazon uses to describe Martin Amis' first novel, and it is striking in the excess physical detail it reveals about the sexual and hygienic habits of teenagers, however disgusting. The story is cynical and sometimes rude, with punches pulled only when boredom weakens the protagonist, Charles Highway. Romantic this book is not, even though Charles is able to surpass his over-analysis of life and love long enough for his intuition to win him Rachel, the catch...more

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Jul 09, 2012 Jim Loter rated it 4 of 5 stars

"The Rachel Papers" is a vulgar, filthy, little book with a despicable, sociopathic protagonist ... and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

On the eve of his 20th birthday, Charles Highway recounts and reflects upon his life so far - a life in which he is obsessed more with cultivating a character than developing a self, seducing girls with clever mixtures of romantic poetry and pop music, and developing an intense but rather unjustified hatred of his father.

After meeting the eponymous Rachel, he starts a...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Brittany Kubes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Forever (Judy Blume) taught me everything I needed to know about sex & young love at age 13. This book is the exact equivalent guide for British teenage boys, presented in satire. So self-conscious, so calculated, so empty, so callous, so teen. Except I’m not a teenage boy (for the most part), so I was only partially amused. The plot humorously captures the realistic course of modern love through the perspective of a 19-year-old boy (intense longing → courtship → honeymoon period → everyday...more

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Dec 15, 2009 Ruzz rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

I'm without historical context for why this short novel should sit somewhere in my heart. I hear it was funny at some point. then maybe too cynical at another.

It felt to me, at times, like reading a bright young whipper snapper's weblog. Nothing at all wrong with that, just not compelling in any way.

amis' writing is always sharp and loaded with extra meanings and his bluntness about how men think about some things must have been a bit of a slap in the face to the post hippie world of the early...more

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Jul 28, 2009 Cailin Deery rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Rachel Papers is hilarious, while shamelessly trashy and egomaniacal. After I got over my misgivings, it was hugely entertaining. I'd never read anything by Amis and impulsively picked this up to read in Oxford & London (the setting switches back and forth between the two cities) with little other rationalization. The Rachel Papers is Amis' first book, penned at 24, and I like what another reviewer said - it's like Catcher in the Rye if Holden Caulfied got laid. Kind of. Only Charles Hig...more

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Jun 17, 2011 Emma Louise rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bought

Apart from wanting to throttle the main character for being exactly the kind of selfish sex-obsessed guy I hate, I enjoyed the story and how it was written and approached. In a perfect world though, he would have been nicer to Rachel even if he didn't end up with her, but I guess it was more true to his character that in the end he broke it off. What bugged me the most was how he slept with Gloria and Rachel in the same day, and never told Rachel about the used and broken condom. That was probab...more

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Oct 13, 2011 Rob Walter rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've given up trying to defend Martin Amis books. I tend to agree with every criticism that people offer, but to me they've missed the point. He's so wonderful to read because he has more technical mastery than any writer of the last fifty years that I've read. He can make his prose, and consequently his characters, do absolutely anything he likes.

As this is his first novel the pyrotechnics are somewhat muted, making it probably one of his more accessible novels. He has focused a bit more on cha...more

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Jul 03, 2008 Punk rated it 1 of 5 stars

Recommended to Punk by: Sab

Fiction. Self-indulgent, myopic, teenage fiction. I like Amis, but not his narrator. Charles Highway is a spoiled 19-year-old who considers himself an intellectual and tends towards something he identifies as "self-infatuation" but makes no move to resist. I couldn't handle him and nearly threw this book down twice for every page I read.

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Oct 04, 2009 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

Take your Catcher in the Rye and scrap it. The idea of phony hating seemed a bit simplistic even when I read it back as teenager. But Rachel Papers much better taps into the advanced thoughts of a young man too well read, self knowing and analytical for his own good. I was never as cruel as the protagonist but reading this one took my back to the mindset was in during my early 20s. It's lines like these that still hit home even amongst the concerns of pimples and sack skills:

"One of the troubles...more

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Apr 09, 2013 James Metcalf rated it 5 of 5 stars

Martin Amis said of this novel, many years after its publication, that he was ashamed at his crassness and lack of skill, but I don't see it that way. The Rachel Papers does sometimes try a little too hard to be inscrutable in its literary references, but the general gist is always hard-hitting, witty, and unmistakably characteristic of this very funny and extremely articulate novelist.

I was particularly struck by my similarity to Charles Highway - the protagonist - in his obsessive compulsion...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Clint rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Clint by: Christopher Hitchens (Memoir)

This was my first introduction to the preciousness of Martin Amis literature. Having been channeled to this book through the memoir of my personal icon Christopher Hitchens, I had high expectations. As has been stated many times before, Amis tends to exaggerate the spread of his lexicon, which in my opinion makes the plot less fluid. No worries, it's still a great read that will incite both nostalgia and indulgent laughs. He is a soldier of the English language, and for a novice reader of myself...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Amis is a very good writer and he does stream of consciousness like not other, but sometimes it just goes on for too long and that is how I felt about this book.

Charles Highway is a few hours away from turning 20 and he feels like this is the end of adolescence so he sits back to review his life so far, focusing on his interactions with his family and his first love. What it comes down to is the realities of growing up and when you come to understand that in a lot of instances the build up to e...more

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About Martin Amis

Martin Amis is an English novelist, essayist and short story writer. His works include the novels Money, London Fields and The Information.

The Guardian writes that "all his critics have noted what Kingsley Amis [his father] complained of as a 'terrible compulsive vividness in his style... that constant demonstrating of his command of English'; and it's true that the Amis-ness of Amis will be recog...more

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Quotes from The Rachel Papers

“Don't I ever do anything else but take soulful walks down the Bayswater Road, I thought, as I walked soulfully down the Baywater Road.” — 16 people liked it

“The thing is that I am a member of that sad, ever-dwindling minority... the child of an unbroken home. I have carried this albatross since the age of eleven, when I started at grammar school. Not a day would pass without somebody I knew turning out to be adopted or illegitimate, or to have mothers who were about to hare off with some bloke, or to have dead fathers and shabby stepfathers. What busy lives they led. How I envied their excuses for introspection, their ear-marked receptacles for every just antagonism and noble loyalty.” — 9 people liked it

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