Gives us one of the most noxiously believable—and curiously touching—adolescents ever to sniffle and lust his way through the pages of contemporary fiction. On the brink of twenty, Charles High-way preps desultorily for Oxford, cheerfully loathes his father, and meticulously plots the seduction of a girl named Rachel—a girl who sorely tests the mettle of his cynicism when he finds himself falling in love with her.