RavePopMattersThe style of Inside Story is, by and large, part of the message itself. There\'s a lot to it ... Ordinarily, all this would compete for pole position on the page but the sheer size of Amis\' world and worldview makes space for everything. Wife and children are touchingly and tenderly shown off, Christopher Hitchens, in all his gregarious glory, is celebrated and mourned, and there\'s Amis\' famous father, Kingsley Amis, to be accounted for ... The book is characterized by a lot-to-get-through and by the story moving around in multiple dimensions ... There\'s no spine-diving allowed for readers looking for a quick fix of Amis at his coltish best; photographs are scattered throughout ... The sense of time of Inside Story feels appealing slow and voluptuous, each section a pocket of spacetime with its own rules ... striking in its experimental cajoling of fact into fiction and its related questions – will it fit, does it matter, will this do? ... Where things don\'t quite add up, Amis fashions the untidy sum into a sort of punchline; where there aren\'t any punchlines, Amis makes the mess into his own cosmic joke. Inside Story is the grimoire of Martin Amis, giving heady clues to inner workings – of him, of life, and of love – while keeping plenty of the mystery.
