Lucky Jim (Penguin Decades)
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Product Description
Product Description
Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling.
Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim was published in 1954, and is a hilarious satire of British university life. Jim Dixon is bored by his job as a medieval history lecturer. His days are only improved by pulling faces behind the backs of his superiors as he tries desperately to survive provincial bourgeois society, an unbearable 'girlfriend' and petty humiliation at the hands of Professor Welch.
Lucky Jim is one of the most famous and influential of all British post-War novels.
About the Author
Kingsley Amis's (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I approached Lucky Jim with a degree of pessimism given its much-vaunted position as one of the great comic novels in British literature. However, the regard and praise is rightly bestowed and richly deserved. As is typical with reading non-contemporary works, it took a few pages to work up a frame of reference for a bygone England of sixty years ago, but soon I found myself empathising with the brilliantly depicted anti-hero Jim Dixon and his struggle to make headway in a world full of self-satisfied individuals and obstructive petty social pretensions. Soon, the novel begins to feel more contemporary than you might initally imagine.
The other thing that soon takes hold is the majesty of Amis's powers of description. Sentences splatter the page which are worthy of being put in a case and displayed in a museum. The way he describes a particularly heavy hangover for the protagonist ('A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum')and a tortuous bus-ride at the novel's climax are an absolute joy. And the novel is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny with some brilliant moments of dark humour. For me, the least satisfactory paragraph is the novel's closing one, but otherwise a sensationally witty and enjoyable read.
The other thing that soon takes hold is the majesty of Amis's powers of description. Sentences splatter the page which are worthy of being put in a case and displayed in a museum. The way he describes a particularly heavy hangover for the protagonist ('A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum')and a tortuous bus-ride at the novel's climax are an absolute joy. And the novel is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny with some brilliant moments of dark humour. For me, the least satisfactory paragraph is the novel's closing one, but otherwise a sensationally witty and enjoyable read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'd never read any Kingsley Amis before reading this, his most famous novel. I found the themes and the characters interesting and I found myself chuckling quite a lot at the absurdity of some of the characters' behaviours. I enjoyed the window into 1950's England, with it's strange social conventions and even stranger personalities! Jim is billed as an anti-hero, but I confess that I quite liked him, mainly due to the fact that he was often thinking exactly what I am thinking in forced, dull social situations. He finds most other people rather dull and uninteresting and I can relate to that! My advice would be to read this very funny book but to have a dictionary to hand as Amis uses quite a lot of archaic langauge that may not be familiar to a modern audience.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I read this book as I thought it was meant to be a modern classic. I found it really hard work and the story extremely tedious. Maybe it was cutting edge when the book first came out but somehow it has dated badly. I read a lot of fiction and this is probably the first book in a couple of years that I struggled to finish. Maybe I'm missing something though?
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