The Folks That Live on the Hill [Hardcover]

Kingsley Amis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 1990

Written by the author of "Stanley and the Women", "The Old Devils", "Difficulties with Girls" and "Crime of the Century", this novel focuses upon the lives of the elite middle-class community living on and around Primrose Hill.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Another example of the new, mellower Amis, who wrote the bestselling (in Britain) The Old Devils , this is a pleasant, rambling, sometimes touching tale of Harry Caldecote, a retired library executive, and the assorted people in his life. These include Fiona, a self-destructive alcoholic related to one of his former wives; Bunty, the daughter of another, who is in an unhappy lesbian relationship; his ineffectual brother Freddie, married to a termagant; Clare, his capable but unambitious sister; and Piers, his son, a witty, elusive cadger. In his bemused way Harry worries about all of them, does his best for them and only very occasionally succeeds in bettering their lot. The character sketches are sharp, Amis's habitual misogyny is very muted, and there are even a couple of sympathetic and sophisticated Asian shopkeepers. A much kinder book than most of his work, then, but with the same sense of muddle and pitifully limited horizons we have come to associate with the Amis world. And the oddities of his style increasingly are coming to seem as carefully stylized, and classic in their way, as those of P. G. Wodehouse.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

"We're a dime breed," laments a pub keeper in Amis's new novel. "Dine out like the dinosaurs." Amis's ear for the delightful shortcuts of spoken English has never been keener, nor his sense of social comedy more perceptive. What prevents Folks from being one of his best works is the colorlessness of its protagonist, Harry Caldecote. A retired librarian described as (get this!) "soft, self-indulgent, languid, but alert against any threat of exertion," Harry is a bore. The eccentric doings of his extended family (scapegrace son, relentlessly henpecked brother, ill-assorted hangers-on by marriage) propel the novel, but Harry and his sense of guilt over his kin slow it down. For collections where Amis is popular. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/90.
- Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Hutchinson (March 29, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0091741378
• ISBN-13: 978-0091741372
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,446,540 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Desultory, but nonetheless memorable, August 31, 2009

By 

bukhtan (Chicago, Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Folks That Live on the Hill (Hardcover)

I've just re-read what has over the years become my favorite Kingsley Amis novel, and am again struck by these characters: the absent-minded Harry Caldecotte (whose insights occasionally roused him to action), the dominant lesbian and her malice, her ingenue partner and her ingenue-ness (their differences preventing genuine companionship), the statuslessness of the ingenue's ex-husband, and the lifelike quality of every last individual among the rest. It seems that I've met all these people, where was it? Cambridge, Mass? Chicago? Maybe I actually saw them on the streets in London, though how could I have known? I was only there for a month and knew no one. Yet they are now part of my memory of Primrose Hill, even more vivid than my memory of the view toward central London.

The articulate and perceptive reviewer of January 2001 refers, justifiably, to "a thin and hard-to-follow plot" and remarks, again with reason, that "Harry Caldecote, the main character, is fairly well developed but the many others appear and disappear with uncomfortable regularity". But isn't this characteristic of our own lives? It's true that the elder Amis concocted some striking plots in his day ("That peculiar feeling" and the "Anti-death league" come to my mind), and that "Folks that live on the hill" has almost no plot, other than the plot that arises from the mere affections and disaffections of the characters, but how many of us live in a plot? And isn't it true that most of the characters we've known have appeared and disappeared, without much regard for how we felt about it? Isn't that life?

Kingsley Amis has always struck me as an intensely realistic writer, the best creator of character in English literature since Shakespeare, rather than a clever master of clever plots. The girl-chasing wears out after a chapter or two, and you have to be in the mood for the drinking stories. His scenes of repartee, for all their sharpness of wit, are no more realistic than the trivial rubbish on American television. Unlike the latter, however, this call-and-response is based on genuine insight into real people; they are the l'esprit de l'escalier we didn't say, even when the fools and berks and nobs who provoked them were still in the stairwell with when we thought of them. For old Amis was a humane and kind-hearted man, for all of his sarcasm, and it's hard to imagine him actually hurling all those barbs, even when the targets were as irritating as he painted them.

I find that I've written a testimonial to the late Amis rather than a review of the book at hand, but let it stand. Let the old sceptic rest in whatever peace may be out there for a man with so little belief in anything other than his annoying but nonetheless lovable fellow man.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hazards and haplessness in a London neighborhood, July 27, 2001

By 

Charles Slovenski (Geneva Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Folks That Live on the Hill (Hardcover)

I picked up this novel with a preconceived notion about what I would find. After all, I had read the maverick son's works and assumed that their dark, contemporary atmosphere was a reaction to the father's stalwart British character. Consequently, just from the title alone, I gleaned an image of the happy goings-on of a small, gregarious community who might meet for tea and air their church-oriented disagreements at the local garden sale, tra la, tra la. NO WAY.

The writing is immediately engaging, especially the dialog which moves fasts and twists sharply. Nothing is what it seems. No one is content. Everyone is getting on with their daily business while covering a deeply discordant nature. The most dramatic example of this desolate irony is when the three very adult children take a taxi to lunch with their aged mother still living nearby where they grew up. It's an awful afternoon: no wants to be there, they don't enjoy each other's company; everyone participates in the charade of a happy family gathering. The author's voice is terribly, that is, fiercely, strong in his cynical and ironic commentary on these people. It is sometimes droll but never funny. In sum, the major characters are trapped in and dependent upon the machinations of their humdrum, small everyday lives. It's delightful writing in a very tough, nearly hideous story. There are wonderful and often scathing depictions: the widow Clare and the cumbersome dog left behind by her late husband, the desperate alcoholic Fiona, the bit-on-the-side Maureen and, most memorably, the more-English-than-the-English Pakistani shopkeepers. Just when I thought the whole things was going to end disastrously, these people are all gathered in the neighborhood pub (but of course, where else?) and accept or resolve their differences while Amis's authorial voice becomes almost paternal and loving. It worked for me: I heartily enjoyed this story with its fussy weave of banal hazards and haplessness, and its finely tuned emotional climax when Harry decides not to accept a promising job in the USA because he and his sister Clare, quite simply, need each other.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Amis' best, January 6, 2001

By 

Truda Faulkner (Modesto, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Folks That Live On The Hill (Audio Cassette)

I have been a great fan of Kingsley Amis from the days of "Lucky Jim." Nothing is more refreshing than his dry wit, his cynicism, and his hilarious descriptions of various people in various stages of intoxication. Probably the best English writer since Trollope, although completely different. This book was, I believe, written in Amis' later years and it shows. It contains an overwhelming number of rather poorly defined characters and a thin and hard-to-follow plot. Harry Caldecote, the main character, is fairly well developed but the many others appear and disappear with uncomfortable regularity. The plot seems to have been formulated (to borrow one of Amis' favorite phrases) by "a group of high-grade mental defectives unacquainted with each other." Nevertheless, it does provide some very enjoyable moments but is not up to par with his normal 5 star work.