Reading this ‘novel’ is like going to stay with an old uncle, one with lots of stories to tell but nobody to tell them to. Little Keith – as Hitchens used to call Amis – has been waiting for you, and when you arrive he welcomes you in: ‘Now, you take your drink, and I’ll take your bag. It’s no trouble… Oh, don’t mention it – de nada. The honour is all mine. You are my guest. You are my reader.’ He is a chummy host, and very entertaining. But as he reveals in the opening pages (or the opening minutes, as it were), something has been troubling him: death. Hitchens, Bellow and Larkin – his trio of friends and mentors who form the three parts of the book – are all dead and Amis is left to confide in you, the (presumed to be young) reader, to reminisce about the past and worry about the future. There are passages of fiction but mostly it is biography, autobiography and lit crit rolled into one cohesive, brilliantly readable whole. This is Amis at his best: sharp, candid and playful.
