Customer Reviews

The Folks That Live On The Hill

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This was Sir Kingsley's twentieth novel, written when he was 68. Several critics have opined that towards the end of his career Amis had, to transplant a metaphor, lost his fastball. But THE FOLKS THAT LIVE ON THE HILL should not be cited as evidence for that proposition. It is the fifth Amis novel I have read and it is essentially the equal of the other four, including "Lucky Jim" from 35 years earlier.

The time of the novel is 1990. "The Hill" is Shepherd's Hill, a fictitious suburb of London. As suggested by the title, there is an ensemble cast of characters. Nonetheless, there is a definite lead character: Harry Caldecote. He is a recently retired librarian, a "senior" member of a stuffy London men's club, and OBE. In his private life, he has been twice divorced and he now finds himself superintending his sister, his brother, his son, his step-daughter, and his step-niece. The sister is a widow and she lives with Harry and cares for him much as a wife would, much better in fact than either of his wives did (as he comes to realize). His brother is a simple soul who is suffocated by his overprotective and insufferable wife. For most of the novel, his son is a rogue and a cadger and an embarrassment to Harry. The step-daughter is in the thrall of a psychologically manipulative lesbian woman. And the step-niece is in the thrall of alcohol. Harry moves in both high and low places.

As usual for Amis, the novel is a vehicle for his satirizing various aspects of life in England. What is unusual in THE FOLKS THAT LIVE ON THE HILL is the compassion that Amis simultaneously shows for most of his characters and the subjects of his satire (the one exception being Popsy, the domineering lesbian). Reportedly, as Amis aged he became ever more curmudgeonly, but THE FOLKS THAT LIVE ON THE HILL displays acceptance of humanity rather than meanness of spirit.

Among the recurring themes are sexual tensions and misunderstandings; the increasing infirmities of age; the maelstrom of acute alcoholism; and the globalization of England (immigrants are ubiquitous and two of them -- Asian subcontinent brothers who operate a newstand/convenience store -- help Harry watch over his brood).

An intelligent novel though it is, the ideas are not sufficient to go out of one's way to track it down and read it. Nor is the plot, which is on the thin side. The chief reason to read it lies in Sir Kingsley's dazzling command of the English language and his trenchant wit. THE FOLKS THAT LIVE ON THE HILL proves once again that on those two scores few who wrote in English during the latter half of the Twentieth Century were his peer.