'Jake's Thing' by Kingsley Amis Penguin 1979, softcover, 286 pages In worn condition with creasing to cover, otherwise intact and all pages clean.

Nearing sixty, Jake goes in pursuit of his lost libido. But is sex really worth it? As liberationists abuse him; a hostess bores him into bed; and even his wife starts acting oddly, Jake seriously begins to wonder.

"This was the first of the trilogy of Amis Pere's trilogy of deeply angry, anti-humanist and misogynist novels, and perhaps the funniest. The objects of Amis' satire (trendy doctors and counsellors, the "helping professions" in general) surely deserve the contempt Amis heaps on them, though the satire sometimes spills over into what seems like genuinely felt and personal rage, not quite mediated or controlled by the authorial "voice". But the various appalling and undignified therapies to which Jake is subjected in the attempt to restore his libido are evoked with comic splendour and I suspect bulls-eye accuracy. Jake's mind, body and intelligence are in every sense insulted. This is still a comic masterpiece. No writer has ever done dialogue, and especially dialogue-as-strategy, talk as point-scoring and jockeying-for-position, as well as Amis." ~Amazon

"Amis amazes at every turn." ~Mail On Sunday

"A great storyteller, although he was much more than a storyteller." ~Keith Waterhouse

"He was a genuine comic writer, probably the best after P. G. Wodehouse." ~John Mortimer

"In these explicit days, Mr Amis is the laureate of the unsayable, the literary it man." ~Sunday Telegraph

~Will combine postage with my other book auctions where possible.