by JULIET WATERS

Few rock critics would open a novel titled Thinly Disguised Autobiography with this memory: it's 1984 and Josh Devereux, 19, is saying goodbye to his best friend, Norton, before Josh heads to Oxford. They've just smoked pot for the first time, and Josh has just puked in the same sink Norton just pissed in, but the worst is over. Now they can just relax and listen to the intro to Supertramp's "Even in the Quietest Moments."

"God, isn't the production on this album fucking brilliant?" Josh gushes. "No, but really though. Isn't it just totally fantastic? I mean, obviously it's not as good as Crime of the Century but still. I can play this bit on the piano, you know. Fool's Overture." The ensuing debate over the merits of Supertramp vs. Joy Division will be one of the last humiliating moments they have before they head off to different schools and their friendship begins to dissipate.

It is, however, far from the last or most humiliating moment in James Delingpole's third and most successful novel. Thinly Disguised Autobiography, if it survives its unpromising title, should become an instant and timeless classic, if only for some of the most excruciating and hilarious bad-sex scenes in the history of literature. While the temptation to elaborate is strong, to deny readers a moment of fresh hell would be unfair. So would revealing too much about the nasty and weirdly fortunate twists of Josh's über-geek life. If it were nothing else, this novel would be a great trip down memory lane for those old enough to remember Sloane Rangers (the London version of preppies) and even those only old enough to remember the early rave years. Fortunately, it's way more.

It's fair to say that Josh's worst problem is that he wants it all. He wants to be a character from Brideshead Revisited (which, when the novel opens, has just been televised for the first time) sipping brandy Alexanders and being seduced by hopelessly wealthy dilettantes. But he also wants to be cool. He wants to be a brilliant novelist, and he also wants to get rich fast. He wants to be a star, but he seems more likely to become a star-fucker. Like many people from his era, he is a hopelessly twisted tangle of ambivalent ambition.

Imagine an unlikely cross between Charlie Kaufman and Martin Amis, and you'll get an inkling of how funny this book is. Josh is obnoxiously ambitious, but he's so plagued with chronic insecurity and low self-esteem it's virtually impossible to hate him. Make the mistake of taking his narrative too seriously, and you might also believe, as he seems to, that he's impossible to like. Every once in a while Josh allows a glimmer of reality into his story, and you realize that most people out there actually do like him, and, strangely enough, so do you.

I've lost count in recent years how many British writers have been desperately compared to early Amis. Wracking my memory, Delingpole might be the only one who really earns the comparison. There are more than a few novelists out there who are funny and smart, and some even share Amis's talent for recreating squirmingly uncomfortable but recognizable social nightmares. What Delingpole has, however, is the kind of disciplined, fearless cynicism that is so strong that it actually manages to occasionally come full circle and feel like compassion. It's the kind of compassion for people's pathetic, worst selves that never has to resort to the poignant moment, or the resolving plot point.

Up until this novel was published last year in Britain, Delingpole was primarily known as the rock critic for Telegraph and TV critic for The Spectator. Hopefully, now that this book has hit North American bookstores, he'll be better known as one of the U.K.'s. best emerging novelists.

Thinly Disguised Autobiography by James Delingpole.
Picador, pb, 256pp, $17.99