[2] The Rachel Papers tells the story of Charles Highway, a bright, egotistical teenager (a portrait Amis acknowledges as autobiographical)[3] and his relationship with his girlfriend in the year before going to university.

Charles Highway is obsessed with literature and literariness, as evidenced by the fact that he continually peppers his narrative with references to great poets and novelists, most notably William Blake.

He is so thoroughly engrossed in and delighted by this artificially constructed world that he is incapable of having genuine human relationships[4] – besides Rachel, the only other person he is close to, his one friend Geoffrey, is constantly high on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol.

While his intense self-awareness at times allows Charles to be cannily poignant and honest about sensitive subjects (his troubled relationship with his philandering father, his sister's dysfunctional marriage, the awkwardness of adolescent romance), his precociousness and narcissism also blinds him to a great deal of his own faults and shortcomings.

[6] While he was praised by some critics for his "ruthlessly brilliant comedy",[7] he was also taken to task for failing to sufficiently animate any of the other characters besides Charles, making the book merely "an easy-reading, mildly funny series of bed-and-bathroom observations.