The Old Devils (1986)

ebook version

Who names their child Kingsley? I mean, honestly, who does? It sounds like the name you’d give a Basset Hound. Anyway, name apart, this was a terrible novel. It was just irretrievably boring.

It centres around the lives of a group of friends and acquaintances in their retirement and is based in Wales. Throughout the whole book, alcohol plays a central role. These people drink it like, no, in preference to, water.

Their lives are really, really sterile. They have dashed hopes that they cosset but never verbalise, they spend all their lives going to parties they don’t enjoy, engaging in trivial or banal conversation, going through routines without ever thinking of why and always the endless flow of fluid.

Mostly, they’re trapped by their fear of each other, of not being accepted by the group, as if this social circle is all there is to life. They have secret affairs with each other which none of them have the balls to even acknowledge to themselves half the time. It made me realise that, potentially, this is what comes of many people who live in the same social sphere for decades of their lives.

If Amis had written it as an intentional social commentary on this sad phenomenon, the novel would be a classic. But it has the most heinous take on it of all: it’s cynical. There’s no real compassion or understanding of what gets people into such a state. And no exploration of the potential that each one of us has of a life that is exuberantly reach and meaningful. Perhaps he didn’t know any better, hence the cynicism.

For me, the novel’s inability to take the issue of the moribund life seriously robbed it of its potential power. What’s left is a boring read. Tedious would better describe it. How on earth this won the Booker is beyond me. 1986 must have been a tragically uninspired year.

Oh my god, what a horrible book. The Old Devils revolves around several 60-something Welsh couples who have known each other for years. Alun and Rhiannon Weaver cause a stir when they return to Wales after several years in England. Alun has become somewhat famous for his writing. But Alan has a bit of a past with the ladies in this social group, causing a certain anxiety for both the women and their husbands. And Alun's wife Rhiannon has slept with a couple of these men herself. In fact, it seems as if everyone has slept with everyone else at some point. That is, when they're not drinking themselves into a stupor before noon.

The book presents a series of interactions between the characters, usually musing over their gin, or wine, or scotch, or whatever else they can find. I lost track of all the cocktail parties and pub crawls, and the endless chattiness about each other, their health problems, and various social issues of the day.

How or why this won the Booker Prize, I'll never know. ( )

Although I'm a great admirer of Amis fils, this my first exposure to Amis pere left me cold. This was a dull plod to read. Too much alcohol, too many loathsome characters, too much pointlessness to their lives. Had they no redeeming features? Did any of them ever commit one act of altruism or show a tad of empathy. Good job their lungs will blacken and their livers fail, I say. ( )

Senior citizen sex! Have I gotten your attention? Wisely the author did not dscribe the sex in any detail - visualization is left to the reader. But there is plenty of it here. Four or five couples (there are a lot of characters) that have known each other for decades have their lives disrupted when one old couple returns to their hometown. It’s like the TV show “Friends” for seniors - they have all slept with each other.

They also do an incredible amount of drinking and smoking, pub crawling all over a fictional Wales. That is part of the theme of the book, searching for the old Wales and the real Welchman. There is a fictional poet that serves as the symbol of that search. Celebrated as a great Welch poet, he didn’t even speak Welch.

It’s a good read, full of wry British humor. ( )