Rating: 
Summary: An enlightening read
Review: As a fan (or addict) of Martin Amis's work, I initially picked up his autobiography warily, wondering how his active, flashy prose would work when facing inward. After completing it, I felt that I had more understanding of where he was coming from, but more so than that, I discovered many aspects of his father's (Kingsley Amis) life. The book is very well written, and despite the annoying use of footnotes to mark augmentations and tangents, I found it an enjoyable read.Amis flits and skips through time, linking everything together by remembered emotional connections. The narrative moves almost unpredictably, switching between father and son, son and daughter, son and cousin, etc. Some of the most beautiful writing regards Martin Amis's cousin, Lucy Partington, who (in the 1990s) was discovered as the victim of a notorious serial killer. Though the mention of Lucy Partington is interesting, it also seems somewhat manipulative, used as a linking theme throughout the book. That aside, the book paints an interesting portrait of Kingsley Amis--a picture that could not be painted by any other source. Read it--especially if you've read other works by both Martin and Kingsley Amis.
Rating:
Summary: An enlightening read
Review: As a fan (or addict) of Martin Amis's work, I initially picked up his autobiography warily, wondering how his active, flashy prose would work when facing inward. After completing it, I felt that I had more understanding of where he was coming from, but more so than that, I discovered many aspects of his father's (Kingsley Amis) life. The book is very well written, and despite the annoying use of footnotes to mark augmentations and tangents, I found it an enjoyable read. Amis flits and skips through time, linking everything together by remembered emotional connections. The narrative moves almost unpredictably, switching between father and son, son and daughter, son and cousin, etc. Some of the most beautiful writing regards Martin Amis's cousin, Lucy Partington, who (in the 1990s) was discovered as the victim of a notorious serial killer. Though the mention of Lucy Partington is interesting, it also seems somewhat manipulative, used as a linking theme throughout the book. That aside, the book paints an interesting portrait of Kingsley Amis--a picture that could not be painted by any other source. Read it--especially if you've read other works by both Martin and Kingsley Amis.
Rating: 
Summary: Arise, Sir Osric.
Review: From dental reconstruction Stateside to rumblings in the basement at Cromwell Street, this is as detailed a document as you are likely to get hold of outside the offices of Janes Defence. Nothing is overlooked in Junior's lengthy chronicle of Amis-dom. The subject matter is down to personal taste, but the writing is clever and engaging. Less so is a silly abuse of the footnote which makes for a great deal of flicking back and forth and an increasing vexation with Osric's lust for minutae. Otherwise, great. Like his father before him, he couldn't write badly if he tried, and the insights provided by the book to the last years of K.A. are balanced and without pathos. Better than anything he's done before.
Rating: 
Summary: What's it all about, Martin?
Review: I greatly admire Martin Amis's skillful pen. I wish I could write half as well. But the subject matter of 'Experience' (Amis, himself) makes me think I lead a more interesting life. If I was setting out to write my memoires, I think I'd leave my teeth out of it (even though they've given me some trouble). Or maybe a paragraph, maximum. If I wanted people to know about the things that struck me emotionally, I would almost certainly include girlfriends/lovers - not dead relatives whom I hardly knew. Most of the interesting parts of 'Experience' are the quotes from Martin's father, Kingsley. So who wants to read second-hand quotes? This book is full of explanatory footnotes that could easily have been included in the main body of text, and would probably have been more interesting for being so. It was a struggle to finish.
Rating:
Summary: A book true to the texture of experience.
Review: I think that Martin Amis has never written more beautifully than he does in 'Experience'. This is saying a lot. In the last twenty years no other writer -- not even John Updike -- has displayed a comparable love of language: what Sebastian Faulks calls Amis's 'disciplined literary exuberance'. I think the 'disciplined' part is something a lot of people overlook in talking about Amis's linguistic acrobatics. Amis never eschews lucidity in his writing; every word is carefully chosen, every adverb and adjective absolutely spot-on. 'Experience' shows Amis turning his prose on himself, and his family, particularly his father; yet the book isn't a conventional memoir. James Wood, in an insightful review, wrote of the book as 'an escape from memoir...an escape into privacy.' Rather than trace in detail the life of a successful writer in the post-WW2 world, the advances and the interviews, Amis has tackled the universal theme of innocence becoming experience; of Youth becoming Age and ultimately Death. This is not to say that Amis has gone super-solemn. 'Experience' is full of wonderful set-pieces (including a wonderfully funny account of Christopher Hitchens laying into Saul Bellow over Israel's foreign policy) and his father's tidal-wave wit is everywhere. But at the heart of 'Experience' sits the understanding that Death is inescapable, yet not impossible to accept. Kingsley's death - the most moving part of the book - removes the intercessionary figure that stands between Martin and Death; yet it also makes him realise how precious and important life is, and how lucky writers are in being able to leave their best work behind them. I should say that 'Experience' does have its annoyances. There are too many footnotes, interesting though some of them are; and Amis appears to be leaning more and more on the ellipsis as a literary device, and diminishing returns are starting to creep in. But these are minor cavils. 'Experience', I believe, will pass the sternest test of literary value: it will reward re-readings in the years to come.
Rating:
Summary: Tell us a bit more.
Review: I used to have Martin Amis down as both a brilliant writer and an honest one. Now I think of him only as brilliant. 'Experience' is superbly written, but it is, ultimately, evasive. Dirt is not required, not by any means, but what is very clear from Amis's life, and let us believe only a fraction of what the newspapers report, is that there have been times when he has caught himself in very painful (and therefore interesting) situations. The problem with 'Experience' is that Amis expends so much candid energy (and his stamina for high style remains astonishing) discussing the effect that other peoples pain has had on him. His old man, his cousin, various deceased dogs. Amis deals with the anger and grief inflicted upon himself by others suffering beautifully. In short, the pifalls of those he loves are Martin Amis's grief. This however, is all noble pain, it's things we can't help, life, luck. We have no real obligation to feel grief over the death of a father, or a murdered cousin (we may hate them) but it serves to remind us of our own humanity when we do. Amis spends nearly the whole of Experience plugging a simple underlying theme, no more complicated or unpretentious then this; 'I am a humane man.' This is a believable theme and evidence abounds for it in all his novels. But his novels also abound with a certain beady-eyed blackness, an eye for the exquistely pathetic and the hilarity and range of human weakness. To write 'Experience' Amis dropped his most wicked tools, and if your going to write something about YOURSELF, and you want it to be honest and complete, as well as effective and excellent (which 'Experience' unquestionably is), you cannot do this. I need some examples. Heres two. Amis's sister Sally, seems to have literally expired out of existence. She was 46 and died of an 'infection' after a long depression related illness. Unlike Lucy Partington, Amis's cousin, Sally barely merits a mention after childhood in "Experience." (Amis's brother is also a peculiarly hollow figure.) Granted, Lucy Partington was murdered by Fred West, simaeltaneously unique, sensational, horrific, fully worthy of extensive comment. But Sally Amis, is also dead, also a little tragic, also worty of extensive comment, and she is Martin Amis's sister. Martin Amis parted from his wife and children to start a new life with another woman. All we get from 'Experience' about these events is that they made him cry on a plane. Discretion is understandable, this fact is NOT missed. But Martin Amis left his wife and children for another woman, a happening that in other writings he has suggested is THE life event, and all he tells the reader about it is that he cried on a plane. Even if this is an indicator of a larger remorse and grief, it is NOT enough. Tragic as it is, writing about a murdered cousin is NOT the hard stuff, writing about self-inflicted family fracture IS. Actually maybe dishonesty is a misguided accusation, maybe there is a second underlying theme that runs through 'Experience' along these lines. ' No I am not going to go to close to home because it is A. too painful and B.(perhaps a sub-theme of A) just TOO private. No autobiography (except perhaps those ghost written on behalf of single-celled lock forwards) tells the WHOLE story. But, by my reckoning, Martin Amis's 'Experience' won't shed a light on so much as half. It is an effective and excellent BOOK, it is also a wholly incomplete AUTOBIOGRAPHY. All the superlatives (brilliant, excellent, superb) are well deserved, but they are wierdly offset by what some people may call 'Englishness' and there is something of a the stiff upper lip about the finished product. But if there's one thing that the body of Amis's work, considered as a whole will tell you, its that Amis knows BETTER then that, and that at the heart of the books agile evasiveness, lies, not just a want of privacy but a lack of real courage.
Rating:
Summary: Martin is a Dull Lad
Review: Let me preface this by saying that I love Kingsley's novels and admire Martin's--especially "The Information". So naturally I was delighted to hear that Martin had written a memoir that featured stories about Kingsley and Philip Larkin and other notables. Well, there aren't nearly enough stories about Martin's famous friends, and the anecdotes he tells often are strangely lifeless. For instance, he recounts several long conversations he's had with Saul Bellow and they're BORING and pointless. Surely Bellow isn't this dull? (And is it necessary for Martin to include several long quotes from "Ravelstein" and a plot summary? Please! I've already read "Ravlestein"!)Also Martin is friends with Salman Rushdie. Surely he has an interesting anecdote or two about Rushdie? Alas, no. The book contains a few good stories from Martin's childhood and college years, but by and large the book's liveliest pages concern Kingsley. The only good jokes are the ones Martin remembers Kingsley telling him, and the best quotes in the book are, not surprisingly, passages from Kingsley's novels or poems or Kingsley's parodies of other people's poems. Martin seems to realize that he's short of great material, as several times he retells a joke that appeared 100 pages earlier. (Is their an editor in the house? Why didn't the [alleged] editors chop off at least 200 pages from this thing?) So if you really, really, love Kingsley, get a copy of this book and speedread through the boring parts. If you're not wild about Kingsley, there's absolutely nothing in this book that would interest you.
Rating:
Summary: A money book
Review: Looking thorugh the last few reviews I feel more than a little sorry for Martin Amis. (Not that with the size of his advances - or indeed the rave reviews he gets in the papers - he needs much sympathy.) I just read Experience, my first Martin Amis book, and thought it bloody good. It's both thoroughly well written and completely engaging; all the narratives (perhaps with the exception of the stuff about Lucy Partington) gripped me and gave me lots to enjoy and think about. The stuff about Sir Kingsley is tops and a wonderful insight into the great old curmudgeon, and Mr. is remarkably moving about Sir K.'s death. I expect real Amis fans get a lot more out of it but you don't have to be a diehard to enjoy his navel gazing, it's not self-indulgent (well, maybe a little) it makes sense and it's interesting and if little Martin was worried about the size of his bum well, I was glad to hear about it. Plenty to get your teeth stuck into here.
Rating:
Summary: Some fascinating revelations
Review: There is only a bit more to say--most of the reviews positive and negative are on the mark. So I want to make a proposition and a suggestion. Mart, a first and a half rate writer son of a first and a half rate writer--along with his pals Hitchens and Rushdie represent the best of what the new world order writers have to offer--great (though sometimes overly precious) writing with little heart--"heart" being an inadequate word to explain the experience of reading great pre new world order writers. Compare him to Evelyn or for that matter Auberon Waugh. At first they seem blood brothers. But Mart like his pals Salman and Chris do not understand the religious impulse--nor for that matter do they have any sense of "home." Now such homless writing is possible--if you are Vladimir Nabokov or Joyce. Martin Amis is neither. Evelyn Waugh tried to be Proust in Brideshead and he failed, but the failure remained an interesting book since there was a world he was engaging. Since Amis and his circle have no ground under them, failure is not an option--all that remains is a wearisome pastiche of fiction or memoir.
Rating:
Summary: Wild Ride
Review: This is a memoir structured like none you have ever read. You don't read about Martin Amis' life, you "experience" it. The occasional letters home written while he was in school anchor the structure. The letters are bracketed by his fierce criticisms of his own past writing styles. Mr. Amis has brilliance, humor and intellect, all bursting like fireworks off the page. He also has quirks that he freely indulges. You have to get past his obsession with his teeth. (Yes, teeth.) He can start on any subject and get waylaid by dental experiences he has had. You almost forgive him these tirades, as he describes them so vividly. No one who has served a sentence or two in a dentist's chair can help but agree "the drill, capable of making your vision shudder." Then there is the issue of his phantom obesity. He continually worries about the past, present and future size of his "bum," yet every single photo in the book depicts a slim boy/youth/man called Martin Amis. One of the strongest areas in the book is his loving tribute to his family, particularly his father, the renowned Kingsley Amis. The family is eccentric-twenty years after his parents' divorce, Kingsley moves in to the upper story of his happily remarried ex-wife's residence where she cares for him the rest of his life. The reason for this move is Kingsley does not and will not stay alone at night. His sons take this as an absolute given and grown up Martin and brother Philip discuss whether they will have to move in with Dad to quell the night frights. Mr. Amis' descriptive powers are a marvel as they drop effortlessly through his narrative, such as, "There is a slushy crush outside the British Airways terminal. Everyone is enlarged, fattened, baggy with impedimenta, with winter coats, padded, air-bubbled, taking up a lot of space, and bumping into one another." He gives you instant mental snapshots and then races off to something new. Some parts of his life he takes for granted you must know and never bothers to enlighten the reader. A photo of Saul Bellow, the author holding a baby and an attractive woman standing by his side is captioned "---For structural reasons, the baby I am wielding cannot be named." Mr. Amis never sheds any light on who this baby is or what the "structural" reasons are. Though the author can be a cynic, waspish and impatient; his best portraits are of those people he admires and loves. His mentor Saul Bellow and close family friend, poet Philip Larkin, are marvelously well drawn and prescient. Martin feels Larkin was horribly maligned by his biographer, Andrew Motion and does what he can by drawing a poignant portrait of his father's dearest friend. This book draws you in until you are completely absorbed and involved in Martin's usually frenetic, but always interesting life. Highly recommended, particularly for anyone interested in modern English literature.
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