Editions

Jake's Thing

Jake's Thing

Jake Richardson, an Oxford don nearing sixty with a lifetime's lechery behind him, is in pursuit of his lost libido and heads off to the consulting room of a miniature sex therapist. Not one to disobey a doctor's orders, he runs the full humiliating gamut of sex labs and trendy 'workshops', where more than souls are bared. He decks himself with cunning gadgetry, dreams up a weekly fantasy, pets diligently with his overweight wife and browses listlessly through porn magazines behind locked doors. Is sex really worth it? As liberationists abuse him, a campus hostess bores him into bed - and even his own wife starts acting oddly - Jake seriously begins to wonder.

Reviews

  • 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-He had a lasting influence and was a very good novelist

    John Mortimer

  • In these explicit days, Mr Amis is the laureate of the unsayable, the literary it man

    Sunday Telegraph

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About the Author

Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis was born in south London in 1922 and was educated at the City of London School and St John's College, Oxford. After the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954, Kingsley Amis wrote over twenty novels, including The Alteration, winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, The Old Devils, winner of the Booker Prize in 1986, and The Biographer's Moustache, which was to be his last book. He also wrote on politics, education, language, films, television, restaurants and drink. Kingsley Amis was awarded the CBE in 1981 and received a knighthood in 1990. He died in October 1995.

Kingsley Amis

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