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
Kingsley Amis religious views is perhaps summed up in a response, reported in his "Memoirs", to the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko's question, in his broken English: "You atheist?" Amis replied, "It's more that I hate Him." During this time, Amis had not turned completely away from the comedic realism of "Lucky Jim" and "Take a Girl Like You". "I Want It Now" (1968) and "Girl, 20" (1971) both depict the "swinging" atmosphere of London in the late 1960s, in which Amis certainly participated, though neither book is strictly autobiographical. "Girl, 20", for instance, is framed in the world of classical (and pop)