Kingsley Amis (1922–1995)

What an awful book this is. The cynicism that pervades it is unlikeable enough on its own, but into his dark cocktail Amis mixes in homophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant sentiment. He routinely refers to members of these minorities as “one of them” and then smugly trots out lame stereotypes in the guise of seeming worldly. At best, you could use the word “dated”, and as there are very few real moments of humor here, it makes for a very unenjoyable read. I did find it ironic show more that in one of the laments that there were “no good areas left” in the city because of immigration, a character says that “an awful lot of people would go along with me; deplorable if you like, but there it is.” How ironic to see the adjective “deplorable” used, and indeed. show less

"I thought to myself how much more welcome a faculty of imagination would be if we could tell when it was at work and when not."

Maurice Allington, is the middle-aged proprietor of a 14th-century English inn called 'The Green Man' who lives on site with his second wife, a daughter from his first marriage and his elderly father. Maurice is a habitual heavy-drinker, hypochondriac and philanderer who is also being haunted by strange visions that no one else is able to see. When Maurice’s show more elderly father suddenly dies, the ghostly visions increase and Maurice starts investigating the possibilities that a wielder of dark magic is haunting his establishment.

No one in Maurice’s circle believes there is a ghost and they all attribute his sightings to his drinking, the shock of his father dying, and so forth. When he uncovers an account from 1720 in which a housemaid details her encounter with the 'Underhill' ghost, Maurice becomes ever more determined to prove them all wrong.

The novel also has some fun sexcapades, including Maurice’s ridiculous attempt to get his wife Joyce into a threesome with his best friend’s wife, Diana. Amis’s characters always seem to have plenty of attention from women but they always find a way to mess things up. Amis never really bothers to give his women any depth generally painting them merely as sex objects.

At the same time, an unreliable narrator is something Amis excels at. Maurice isn't a particularly likeable character but he is quite comical in a sozzled Basil Faulty sort of way; you are never certain whether or not he actually sees any apparitions or whether they are simply manifestations of a drink-sodden mind. This a modern Gothic short novel where by today's standards the ghost is quite placid and easily dispensed with but its both comical and exhilarating in parts making it an satisfyingly quick read overall. show less

Kingsley brilliantly imagines a world in which the Reformation never occurred (Martin Luther becoming Pope Germanius I) and the western world has devolved into a Roman Catholic theocracy. 1973 Coventry, England's largest city, would be largely recognizable to real life citizens 150 years earlier. In this world, women, Jews and "Indians" are repressed, demeaned and marginalized. The plot turns on the great God given honor bestowed upon boy soprano Hubert, who has been chosen to be surgically show more altered to preserve forever his high youthful voice. His story serves as a springboard for sharp satire properly lambasting of tyranny in all forms. I normally don't enjoy dystopian novels, steampunk, or science fiction. In the hands of this comic master, I passed a quite enjoyable afternoon. show less

A late collection of Amis short stories, and something of a rag-bag. “Mr Barrett’s secret”, “Captain Nolan’s chance” (a radio play) and “1941/A” are all explorations of historical theories — did Elizabeth Barrett’s father take against her relationship with Browning because he was afraid of getting Black grandchildren? Could the Charge of the Light Brigade have been provoked by a British spy plot rather than simple incompetence and crossed wires? Could Germany and Japan show more have forced the USA to surrender in 1941? Well, probably not in all three cases, but Amis has fun working out how it might have happened. He is good at getting the period tone right, but the plotting is a bit heavy-handed and in the third case the resulting piece is barely a sketch, certainly not a story in any conventional sense.

The other pieces are a bit less predictable: “Boris and the colonel” turns from a literary puzzle around Gray’s Elegy into a kind of John Buchan adventure story, with a Plucky Girl on a horse assisting the professor-detective to defeat the nasty foreigners. And a little Edward FitzGerald reference for anyone who is looking. “A twitch upon the thread” happily turns out to have nothing to do with Evelyn Waugh; it’s a reasonably subtle story about an Anglican priest being reunited with his long-lost identical twin. And “Toil and trouble” is a modern day Conan Doyle pastiche about the kidnapping of a literary agent. show less