Customer Reviews

The Russian Girl

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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.

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.

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.

What does this writer intend exactly? Hollow charcters you would personally boot out of a dinner party, plus linguistically dubious attempts at Russian double talk. An utter bore this book: God! I'm beginning to sound like Sir Kingsley himself.