The Green Man (New York Review Books Classics)

This is a modern gothic tale. A ghost story with a bit of randiness thrown in. A story set in a pub in the suburbs of Cambridge that raises questions about death, sexuality and the afterlife but Amis does so with a wink to the reader about his own devices. My favorite example is on page 189 where he demonstrates an ability to work in a laugh at himself :" an inability to leave even the most utilitarian sentence unadorned by some verbal frill or knob or curlicue......... Oh well, what had I expected ? The thing was a novel " This humor in his writing is incredibly weaved into a part of the story dealing with quite serious adult matters and for me shows an author who was very much in command of the tone he wanted to achieve with a story that could have been quite dark in the hands of a lesser writer.This along with Lucky Jim are the two Amis novels I have tackled so far but I will certainly visit his other works. I thoroughly enjoyed both.

It's a ghost tale, but the background story of the family and friends is more interesting than the arbitrary supernatural stuff. That knocks off a star for me, but the narrator's wit, urbanity, cynicism and obliviousness to the reality of the people in his life, all combine to make him a priceless character.

Kingsley em'er ef'in Amis, man. How on earth does this genius of a man make this book as scary as he does and keep it interesting when the protagonist is such a low-down train wreck and most of what is happening may not actually be happening at all? I took notes. Not kidding. When I found myself getting a little too worried for him or too tense to keep reading, I would walk it off. But I kept the page dog-eared for later analysis.As a side note, the only other book to ever mess with my mind that way, even though I have lots of favourite pot-boiling authors, was The Crying of Lot 49, without the same horror without the horror style of fear factor. And even Joaquin Phoenix shaggy mug can't dissuade me that Thomas Pynchon is a genius.Also, this book made me rethink my poor opinion of Claret, especially in a cool weather setting. By the end, I was wanting to pull up a chair and stay up all night with the proprietor of the Green Man. On the list of all-time favourites, and I can't believe I couldn't find it in any local or even locally corporate bookstores. Shame on them. A win for A-zon. A classic.

Some might not agree with my reading of Kingsley Amis' The Green Man. I found the book to be completely saltatory, darkly humorous, with twists and turns, and with complex characters, the most of which is the narrator, himself. The book is short, but densely packed with precise diction. One gets the sense that Kingsley Amis carefully chose all of the words for this volume. It is also semi-autobiographical in that Kingsley Amis was estranged from his own son, Martin Amis whose father showed no interest in his writing. He describes a fictional son as being boring in the worst suburban way, and whose wife is even worse. Kingsley Amis often took an almost journalistic interest in subjects which held sway in his life through different periods. During the sixties, he was taken with an interest in how God, and omnipotent, omniscient, and all-powerful being could plague the world with such misfortunes. These sentiments, unlike much of the writing he did in the other decades of his life, consumed him. He was also associated with other literary figures of his day, including Colin Wilson, Iris Murdoch, and Ian Fleming, a wide spread of interests to be sure. If even one person gives this book a try, that would be good enough.

I suppose my expectations were too high, but Amis is a favorite writer of mine, and this was neither witty nor engaging. Oh, and not scary, either.

Not as funny as Lucky Jim or Girl 20,But genuinely interesting ang like all of Amis's best work salvific by finding the tenderest humanity in characters capable of grotesque thoughts and behavior all to realistic and familiar. Also the most piquant conversation with God I've ever read , made-up youthful with undertaker's foundatio incapable of disguising deaths pallor, and the skeletal scaffolding and redolent, unmistakeable, long-dead-bouquet scent of death casually disclosed. No changing necessarily but a comfort taken in being a part of a material universe that one's consciousness of will soon be immaterial . A fascinating story despite genre expectations I stars their surgically precise implementation - why Amis will always be more interesting to read than Stephen King.

An eerie story and something I would love to experience, a meeting with "god" when time stopped. Saw the tv series many years ago, very English. Written in the 60's style, eloquent etc.

I read this maybe 50 years ago and returning I got so much more out of it.

Other reviewers have noted similarities to M R James and Henry James in this novel, but to the best of my knowledge no one has compared it to another metaphysical ghost story, Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol.' Yet its unpleasant central character (hardly a hero) achieves a kind of redemption through his encounters with three ghosts. I think it's Amis's second-greatest novel, after his other superb genre piece, 'The Alteration.' What a loss he was to imaginative rather than literary fiction.Pub landlord Maurice Allington is an alcoholic, self-centred, middle-aged lecher, who despises his customers and neglects his family, and is approaching a total nervous breakdown: a typical Amis figure, in other words. His main interest when the novel opens is persuading his young wife and mistress into bed for a threesome. But he meets three ghosts: Dr Underhill, an evil 17th century clergyman, black magician and seducer of under-age girls; Underhill's terrified wife; and a demonic creature he has called up. When almost under Underhill's domination, Maurice is saved by another paranormal visitor who turns out to be God Himself, who needs his help to defeat Underhill's purposes.As in Henry James's 'Turn of the Screw,' we wonder if the phantoms are real, or Maurice's alcoholic delusions (not that James's governess was alcoholic, unless she kept a hip flask in her reticule: her delusions, if such they were, arose from an overheated libido). Only the exciting climax of the novel answers this question.Witty, laugh-out-loud funny (particularly in its depiction of a trendy atheist vicar), spooky, sexy and moving. I enjoyed it when it first came out, and on re-reading I can't give it fewer than five stars.

A witty, thoughtful and amusing exploration on some of the key themes in life: love, death, literature, a ménage à trois, ghosts and whisky. A friend suggested that, as I had never read any of Kingsley Amis's novels before, I should try this one. I now pass the same advice to any reader who's interested. Amis has succeeded in blending the quotidian with the supernatural to create what is a moving and thoroughly original work of fiction. I only wish it were a bit longer.

Having read Lucky Jim yet again and laughed out loud - this was a disappointment. I couldn't like any of the characters. If you were around in the 70s though, may resonate.

Excellent book - can’t put it down

The Green Man is a great yarn and very funny to boot.