Experience (Martin Amis) very moved. What seems at first just gossip and guestlists - sprays of names offered without explanation, diaristic footnotes, a refusal to universalise - soon becomes a kind of tender defiance, as if Amis wanted the book to vibrate with an atmosphere of wounded privacy." Terence Baker, in "The Sunday Times", called it a "careful, heartfelt tribute." Jackie Wullschlager, wrote in the "Financial Times", "The core here is family, and it is movingly, beautifully, evoked... The raw materials – neurotic, outrageous genius of a father; gorgeous earth-mother Hilly; sophisticated step-mother Elizabeth Jane Howard; stunning girlfriends dropped along the way like
Amis and Amiloun Amis and Amiloun, who are born to different parents in different parts of a kingdom but look identical. They serve the same duke. Amis falls in love with a beautiful girl, Belisaunt, who seduces him, but the duke's steward betrays him to the duke. Since Amis cannot swear to have not had relations with the girl, Amiloun takes his place in the trial by battle which ensues and kills the steward, even though an angel had told him that he would be struck with leprosy—after all, Amis was guilty. Amis and Belisaunt get married and he succeeds the duke but