Man up: Amis is loyal to old friends like (from the top) Philip Larkin, Christopher Hitchens and Saul Bellow
© ALBUM/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, JOHN DEMPSIE/ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS, STEN ROSENLUND/SHUTTERSTOCK
Inside Story: A Novel by Martin Amis (Jonathan Cape, £20)
Can this really be Martin Amis’s last novel? He’s been writing them for most of my life, starting with The Rachel Papers in 1973, and producing a steady flow since, along with journalism and essays, assorted broadsides and sideswipes. These often came accompanied by a portrait of Amis wearing his famous sulky moue. That refusal to smile suggested a new and dangerous intellectualism- although it later turned out he was hiding bad teeth-an impression that primed us for something revolutionary.