The Green Man

Rating:
Summary: A ghost story
Review: "The Green Man" is a ghost story. Maurice Allington owns and operates the Green Man Inn. It's supposed to be haunted, but ghosts haven't been seen since Victorian times.

Maurice spends most of his time avoiding the people in his life--his father, his emotionally detached wife, Joyce, and his lonely daughter, Amy. He does have time, however, to initiate a sexual relationship with Diana, the bored, talkative wife of the local doctor.

As Maurice begins increasingly detached from his domestic life, he begins to "see" things--including the ghost of Dr. Thomas Underhill--a 17th Century villian who may or may not committed 2 ghastly murders.

Unfortunately, no-one believes Maurice's sightings, and it does seem up for grabs whether or not Maurice is hallucinating or whether this is all just the result of Maurice's alcoholic binges.

Underhill seems to have a message for Maurice, and, unable to resist, Maurice takes the bait and begins to unravel the Underhill mystery in a detective style.

Maurice is a marvellous Amis character--lacking the self-deprecating humour and comic talents of Jim Dixon in "Lucky Jim," Maurice is weaker and not as likeable. Nonetheless, the hand of Amis is clearly visible.

The book was gripping at times and amusing at others. I laughed and laughed when Maurice attempts to set up "The Orgy" between Joyce, Diana, and, of course, himself! I loved the way he tried to introduce the subject to his wife--in spite of the fact that he receives ample warning signals to the contrary. If you enjoy this book, I can heartily recommend "Lucky Jim"--another brilliant Amis novel.

Rating:
Summary: A GREEN MAN AND PINK ELEPHANTS
Review: Some of the best and most entertaining fiction by Kingsley Amis is comparatively little known, and I am pleased to see The Green Man available here and there. It has his usual virtues of offbeat humour, a gift for atmosphere, an engaging show of fogeyishness and some really memorable writing; and it has his occasional traits of implausibility, lapses of concentration and discursiveness, which I sometimes find irritating and sometimes entertaining depending on what mood I am in.

This is a distinctly original ghost story. Whether or not Amis found the basic inspiration for his green man in legends, or in The Golden Bough, or in other fiction I have no idea. I can't think of a similar creature in similar literature that I have come across, perhaps simply because there is no similar literature. The thread of the preternatural does not dominate the narrative, which is largely concerned with the interactions between the narrator and his family and acquaintances. The story is told by an alcoholic publican, remarkably lucid and vigorous for the most part, and opinionated and prejudiced in a way that suggests to me that the author had put some of himself into the character. He is the only character in the book who is drawn in the round, but his alcohol-dependency is not investigated in any depth, simply treated as a necessity to the plot. He is bored, grumpy and dissatisfied - familiar enough Amis themes - and predictably in search of sexual, if not precisely emotional, interest outside his rather flat and uninvolving marriage. To me, he is not completely convincing. He is rather grandly detached and above-it-all for someone with such a massive and corrosive problem of his own, but that is not the sort of quibble I would expect to bother Amis.

The real reason for the alcoholic theme is that the author is being a bit of an old tease. Allington, the publican, sees some pretty amazing things, and we are supposed to be left wondering to what extent they are objectively real and to what extent drink-induced delusions. For the most part they were real for me, and I believe real from the author's standpoint too, until the latter stages of the book. Here I detect a touch of wheel-slip - I simply think Amis is losing the plot a little, a suspicion confirmed by the way he winds up the narration in a slightly perfunctory manner. It's a fine story for all that. It will certainly appeal to his aficionados in general if they have not yet got around to it, and if you acquire it for a 5-or-6-hour flight or train journey on a caveat lector basis, I shall be disappointed if you are disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: WICKED WRITER
Review: This book was my introduction to the world of Kingsley Amis, and if it's any indicator of his talent, then I'm definitely staying around. The Green Man is a great novel- a spoof of the horror genre with elements of satire on one level, and yet it also has an important message underneath it all. The main character of this novel, Maurice, is either a nutcase or is really seeing dead people. You be the judge. I loved his charcter through all his orgyness and consumption of pills and booze. Anyone who likes horror and wants something a little different, or even those who aren't fans, but want to read a novel by a master of the english language, capable of making anything sound good-check this book out.