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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant author weaves yet another witty, comic tale,
By discord@wans.net (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Girl, 20 (Paperback)
Kingsley Amis has again written a story of infidelity, destructive selfishness, and blatant stupidity and managed to make it hilarious. The basic story centers on a symphony conductor who, in an attempt to reawaken his lust for life, is having an ill-advised affair with a girl one-third his age. As you might expect, the disasters this creates in his life are quite entertaining. The narrator, an upper-crust music critic, speaks of the rapid disintegration of the conductor's family and his own love life with such detached snobbery, that even mundane events come alive with vivid humor. Especially funny is his description of a date that includes attending a wrestling event. One warning: Amis offers no clean-cut solutions, but turns expectations upside-down. The last page of Girl,20 comes as a surprise that will leave you wishing for more.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not quite so Lucky,
This review is from: Girl, 20 (Paperback)
Girl, 20 is another fine and funny book by Kingsley Amis. Main characters include music critics, an orchestra conductor and violinist and there are conflicting views presented (Amis's?) about the value and competency of Gus Mahler's symphony #1. Girl, 20 not quite as uproariously funny as Lucky Jim. The ending caps the destruction of a family. Lucky Jim has a more satisfying ending.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Say Not The Struggle Naught Availeth,
This review is from: Girl, 20 (Paperback)
In Zachary Leader's biography of Amis, he quotes Christopher Hitchens as saying that, in `Girl, 20', Amis had `inflicted a satirical wound' on the `intellectual left'. He feels that this book, published in 1971, actually damaged the credibility of the left.
Kingsley Amis was an exceptionally perceptive writer, but he falls into the same trap that so many writers writing about the `swinging sixties' fall into, of conflating the radical left and hippy movements and assuming that all members of both were idiots, or at least failures. In fact the people who were idiots were the weekend hippies and armchair radicals who never took a risk in their lives and wore kipper ties and fantasized about being on television (or actually managed it). Robert H Bell, a critic, in an accessible webpage about Amis's novels, feels this is a brilliant novel about people who lead `desparate, bleak and terrible lives'. Personally I found all but one of the characters highly unattractive. We have a total wimp of a narrator, who takes everybody's side and never says no to anyone, a famous conductor with an IQ of 70, the narrator's girlfriend who competes with her partner in acquiescence, a nasty newspaper editor and a high-class 17 year old harridan, not to mention an odious small boy and his pathetic mother. Excuse me while I collect myself. The only attractive character is Vandervane's (ie the conductor's) daughter who has spirit and intelligence, and doesn't constantly assume centre stage pontificating like everyone else. Because Amis is an excellent writer his surface cynicism is always layered over a certain `we're all in it together' empathy, which this girl somehow embodies. Amis apparently once said, it wasn't that he didn't believe in God, it was just that he didn't like him very much. In his previous book, `The Green Man', the main character expands on this in a conversation with the Almighty that says a lot, perhaps, about the writer's feelings. It's almost as if Amis can admire the craftsmanship but can't figure out the plot. As Martin Amis says, it is a sad book, but in my opinion it is the daughter and even in a way the preposterous conductor who show the way. If Hitchens thought the left were found out by this it only shows what a poverty of imagination he ultimately has. I think he's right, however, in saying this is one of Amis's best books.
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