Customer Reviews

The Anti-Death League

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For a book full of the lovely Brits that habitually inhabit the books of Amis, this is the best I've read yet. We have the whole cast right here, the irreverent homosexual to the chaplain who goes on sexual escapades. The book is based in the British Army in the 60s, and we get a pretty intriguing plot to do with a foreign enemy and mysterious weapon of unimaginable horror. And this is where we get a clue to the title. Lt. James Churchill isn't the central character here (for that, there really is no main character, but rather a set of characters) but the story revolves around his particular aversion to God and the bad things that happen to people apparently at random, especially death. This is where I found the book to be most intelligent and thought-provoking. The Anti-Death League in reality only features very briefly, but it does give meaning to the main idea of the book, that of people feeling disillusioned with God and challenging His existence. Apart from that, there are some hilarious scenes with a mad doctor in charge of the local loonies place, the homosexual Max Hunter and the inept spycatcher Captain Leonard. There is some excitement with the chasing and catching of the purported spy or spies, very much helped by Amis' comic touch. And the end is very nicely and properly poignant and leaves the reader to decide for himself if the book's message is atheistic or otherwise or not at all that either.

My only reservation with this delightful book was the romantic aside between Churchill and Catharine, a former patient of the asylum. Although it fits in well enough with the story, it just did strike me as a bit trite and, well, rather too sentimental. If not for that, I would have given it a fiver, and even now I think four and a half stars do the real justice to this book.

Randy soldiers (homo and hetero); a nymphomaniac aristocrat who entertains, seriatim, officers in her country house; a mad psychiatrist at the army mental hospital; a semi-agnostic and non-judgmental padre; a mad security officer; an army officer and an ex-mental hospital patient in love with each other - these are the principal characters in this novel, most of whom verge on caricature. And they are constantly in need of a drink. The first half of the book is mainly about the relationship between all these people, though in the background there is a sinister army exercise called Operation Apollo. This becomes more central in the second half. Operation Apollo is a preparation for nasty things being done to the Chinese whose spying activities and aggressive intentions obsess the security establishment. (The book was first published in 1966.) At various times several characters on the army base are suspected as Chinese agents; the plot becomes as insane as some of the individuals in the book, but without a lucid story line such as is found in good spy novels. The book aims at being a black comedy; and there are several speeches in which characters reflect on whether there can be a God in such a wicked world: this debate, also, has been much better done elsewhere.

I couldn't get involved with the book at all.

Having read a couple Martin Amis books, and more or less enjoyed them, I figured I should check out something by Amis pere. Set on an army base in (apparently) the 1960s, this book tries to blend farce with love story with meditation on the fallacy of God. It doesn't ever really all come together, and in fact no one element works very well on its own either. The farce aspect just wasn't that funny, the love story was hoary and trite, and the meditations of the cruelty and indifference of God seemed rather forced into the rest of it. There are some good scenes here and there, and a large cast of nutty characters, but rarely was I made to care about any of them. Guess I'd better stick to Martin.