The Russian Girl [Hardcover]

Kingsley Amis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 24, 1994

The dean of Britain's comic novelists skewers contemporary art, literature, political correctness, and the war between the sexes in a novel featuring a London academic whose romance with a visiting Russian poet threatens his career. 20,000 first printing. $15,000 ad/promo.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This time out Amis pere has written a sort of dourly comic version of le Carre's The Russia House. English expert on Slavic languages Richard Vaisey, married to dreadful but wealthy Cordelia, falls for visiting Russian poet Anna Danilova, who seeks English celebrity support to get her brother out of a Moscow jail (the time is the period surrounding the failed coup against Gorbachev). This presents an agonizing dilemma for the lovelorn Richard: Anna is a terrible poet, so what is he to do? And how is he to keep her and suspicious Cordelia apart? In lighter hands this could be the stuff of a lively contemporary farce, and there are certainly some comic moments: Cordelia, for instance, is a brilliant creation, and her extended revenge, when Richard finally plucks up the courage to leave her, is horrifyingly hilarious. But Amis's awkwardly plodding style, admired though it may be in England, and the rather dim characterization of Richard, allow the story to be only fitfully amusing. At least Amis's customary misogyny is all concentrated this time on the fearful Cordelia, and in Anna he has created one of his more believable and likable women.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Dr. Richard Vaisey is an esteemed scholar at the London Institute of Slavonic Studies whose wife, Cordelia, has perfected the art of manipulation. When Anna Danilova, an obscure Russian poet, asks his help in freeing her brother from a Russian jail by making her "famous" and thus calling world attention to the brother's plight, Richard finds himself torn between his growing passion for her and his outright dislike of her poetry. Realizing what is going on between her husband and "the Russian girl," Cordelia, plots revenge. Vaisey's conflicting emotions allow Amis, in his acerbically witty way, to explore the nature of art, criticism, academic integrity, and, ultimately, love. Even Americans come in for a tongue lashing--"if . . . a book had to be a novel, then let it contain as little fiction as possible. Maybe it is that Americans are a nervous lot and the idea of somebody inventing people and events out of imagination, out of nothing makes them uneasy." While Richard's dilemma drives the plot, it is Cordelia's nastiness that provides the real spice. She is a wonderful character whose idiosyncrasies will be appreciated by Amis's many fans. For most academic and public libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/94.
- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First edition (May 24, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670853291
• ISBN-13: 978-0670853298
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,678,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Amis crafts a timely story of post cold war social comment., January 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Russian Girl (Paperback)

Not content to limit himself to his usual playgrounds of lampooning modern English society and exacerbating the battle of the sexes, Amis shows off a scholarly appreciation of the differences, once shrouded by the iron curtain, between conservative and corrupt post-Soviet Russian society and the Western world. In a very readable yarn Amis does all this without bogging down in heavy moralization. The story of the romance between a bookish British professor of Russian and a young Russian Poet in the west for the first time is entertaining, sharp, witty, and wise. This is Amis the writer as a mature sophisticate who manages to keep his erudition in check.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another good one, November 24, 1999

By 

Larry (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Russian Girl (Paperback)

Well-written, entertaining, and a bit surprising. I've read almost all of his novels ... most are good, a few are great, a couple are marginal. This is a good one. It is not at all obvious that the hero is better off at the end than at the beginning. Thinking is required of the reader so if that isn't your thing, don't bother.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars entertaining, not involving, March 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Russian Girl (Paperback)

A decent novel but nothing spectacular. Amis is (wordily) witty as always, but the conflict here seems contrived and the whole thing runs out of energy near the end. Too much dialogue with the prof's various friends, most of it repetitive. After reading five Amis novels I'm beginning to think his Lucky Jim was a bit of a fluke.