I began this book squirming with annoyance. Annoyed at the story, annoyed at the style, annoyed at how just so bloody smug Amis appears to be when writing about a clash of cultures and generations (all the time making it abundantly clear that it’s a lot better to be mature, successful and admired than it is to have, say, a flat stomach), annoyed that I had started reading it at all and, most of all, annoyed that, against my will, I was actually enjoying a book that had annoyed me so much.

Amis is at his best when writing about what he knows; drinking, the newspaper industry, drinking, the media in general and the way it treats prominent media figures in particular, drinking, fame and its cost and its responsibilities, drinking, the necessity to work at your craft if you want to enjoy continued success, and drinking.

But there are features of the story that are just so annoying that you want to hurl the damned book across the room and sit, sulking and slumped, watching telly with the grim satisfaction that if Amis knew you were doing that in preference to reading his work, he’d be about half as annoyed as you are.

The problem with certain portions of the book is that Amis is just not as clever as he thinks he is. Worse, you get the feeling that nobody is quite as clever as Amis thinks he is. Where Amis becomes unstuck is when he tries to write about music (two of the central characters are a composer and a music critic) and it becomes apparent that, unlike the hours of detailed research he has put into boozing and the working of the newspaper industry, it would appear that he spent ninety minutes in the library with a reference book about the orchestra aimed at eight to twelve year olds before knocking off and uncorking lunch.

When he tries to write about youth though, it’s so bad that it’s actually embarrassing. In reading it my toes curled to the point that they were almost touching my heels. God alone knows where he came to his views about youth. I assume that he was young himself and know he had children, but the monosyllabic trolls he populates his pages with as examples of stereotypical youth appear to spring directly from the pages of the more hysterical type of Daily Mail editorial.

But it’s okay because, before your rage actually leads to any action, the story has moved on to something that’s engaging or amusing.

The book is about the generation gap and how that generation gap actually manifests. More than a simple age gap, it highlights how the older generation strive for success, approval, love and the occasional leg-over with young women with really good breasts while the younger generation affect not to care about possessions, about love or actually much about anything really, but are eventually exposed as not so much not caring about having those things, but rather not bothering to earn them when they are available by taking them from the older generation instead.

It’s also a story about an old, successful, creative man using his celebrity to screw a young girl. In this case though that’s okay because the girl in question is so vile and so affected that when reading about an octogenarian composer making overtures to her, one wonders where one’s sympathies lie and just who is exploiting whom.

There’s a lot that’s good here too, the swearing is good and there’s a good recurring device where one of the characters uses different phrases as substitutes for swears. And just how uncomfortable young people can make the old, who cannot understand why they cannot relate to even those they are the parents of, is explored with some detail and sympathy.

Overall, certain sections of the book have just enough charm to keep one reading even though there’s a distinct flavour of this being not so much a novel as a selections of unfinished ideas and essays, like a collage of the backs of fag packets and beer mats, stitched together with the traditional plot device of infidelity and the generation gap. ( )