"The book's heart [is] its literary criticism, labor that allows Amis to realize his most comfortable and integrated self: a novelist engaged in the scrupulous appreciation of others' style. Amis cherishes the most cosmopolitan virtue of all, humor, [and] approvingly quotes Clive James's observation that 'common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing.' To be without one is to be without the other, a double lack that would doom a writer [to] the inability to rub up against human nature, to strike the sparks of awareness and style that here illuminate everything, especially the books in Amis's firm grip." --The New Yorker "The product of a ferocious yet sensitive mind . Amis's book is like hurtling down a black-diamond ski run. His aim is so unerring that he resembles a figure out of Greek myth, firing arrows through ax-heads lined up in a row." -- The New York Times "Amis at his considered best, witty, erudite, and unafraid. This collection is full of treasures.

" --The Guardian "Amis writes with buoyant and cutting authority. His vocabulary, cross-pollinated by his trans-Atlantic reading and life, is pinpoint and peppery; his syntax supple and ensnaring. The pleasure Amis takes in observation, cogitation, and composition is palpable, and he is acidly funny. Amis writes with agility, spirit, artistry, and a shrewd sense of the deepest implications." --Booklist "Glorious. Very few writers can surprise and delight in the way Martin Amis can." --The Telegraph "Martin Amis is a great writer and a great reader. He is our sure-footed mountain guide, leading us gleefully from one delight to the next.

" --The Sunday Times (London) "A sharp, witty collection. Literate, perspicacious, and thoroughly entertaining." --Kirkus Reviews "Certitude is the key to Amis's superhuman flair--and what makes this collection so compelling." --The New Statesman (London) "Amis is infallibly a lucid, linguistically precise commentator. A witty, welcome presence." --Publishers Weekly.