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Published Oct 2020
560 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From one of the most highly acclaimed writers at work today: his most intimate and epic work yet--an autobiographical novel of sex and love, family and friendship.
This novel had its birth in the death of Martin Amis's closest friend, the incomparable Christopher Hitchens, and it is within that profound and sprawling friendship that Inside Story unfurls. From their early days as young magazine staffers in London, reviewing romantic entanglements and the latest literary gossip (not to mention ideas, books, and where to lunch), Hitch was Amis's wingman and adviser, especially in the matter of the alluringly amoral Phoebe Phelps--an obsession Amis must somehow put behind him if he is ever to find love, marriage, a plausible run at happiness. Other significant figures competing as Amis's main influencers are his father, Kingsley; his hero Saul Bellow; the weirdly self-finessing poet Philip Larkin; and significant literary women from Iris Murdoch to Elizabeth Jane Howard.
Moving among these greats to set his own path, Amis's quest is a tender, witty exploration of the hardest questions: how to live, how to grieve, and how to die. In search of his answers, he surveys the horrors of the twentieth century, and the still-unfolding impact of the 9/11 attacks on the twenty-first--and considers what all of this has taught him about how to be a writer. The result is a love letter to life--and to the people in his life--that achieves a new level of confidentiality with his readers, giving us the previously unseen portrait of his extraordinary world.
"The book is almost everywhere wonderfully readable, rich in the familiar Amis pleasures of wit, insight, and well-formed anecdotes. As for how much those pleasures derive from real life or fiction, let's award the benefit of the doubt to the artist behind both. An intriguing, often brilliant addition to a storied career." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[C]onsistently intelligent and compulsively readable...Amis again proves himself to be as savvy a thinker as he is a writer as he applies his insight and curiosity as a novelist to this stylish and genuine account of his development as a writer. The result reaches the heights of his finest work." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Brilliant ... Abounds with entertaining anecdotes ... Stylistically, Inside Story is most reminiscent of Dylan's Chronicles, a master artist following his muse to create a genre-defying and career-defining work." - Booklist (starred review)
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Isabel Fonseca
Martin Amis is the son of another famous British novelist, Kingsley Amis, and although he credits his initial welcome into the publishing world to his father's influence, much has been written about this father and son phenomenon and their relationship as writers, including the story that Amis' father actually stopped halfway through reading his son's novel Money and threw it across the room. In an interview with The Paris Review in 1998, Amis confirmed the story saying, 'I'm almost certain that it was the introduction of a minor character called Martin Amis that caused my father to send the book windmilling through the air.'
His father's disapproval did not dampen Amis' spirits for long though, as he humorously explained: "He didn't like Jane Austen, didn't like Dickens, didn't like ...
... Full Biography
Link to Martin Amis's Website
Name Pronunciation
Martin Amis: AIM-is
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