The Old Devils (Vintage Classics)
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Book Description
Amis amazes at every turn - Mail on Sunday
Product Description
Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon. (20030402)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One of his best. A Professional Welshman returns, with his beautiful wife, to the Welsh town of his youth, and together and separately the couple meet up with all their old friends. The "hero" is happy to get off with all his friends' wives and drag his old mates on a weeklong pub crawl. A lot of alcohol is absorbed as the old friends are revealed as living lives of quiet desperation, leavened by 30s jazz. The BBC dramatised this back in the 80s - the brilliant series has never been repeated, and it's not on DVD. Why, oh, why?
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ageing "professional Welshman" Alun (nee Alan) Weaver decides to up-sticks from his fashionable North London home and go back to his roots. Taking with him his ex-hottie wife (Rhiannon) and many half-completed written projects and other half-formed ideas.
Despite the passing of time (in which he has gained a CBE and a minor talking-heads TV career - seemingly based on knowing a, here renamed, Dylan Thomas) he is soon back as leader-of-the-gang: The "Old Devils" (Malcolm, Charlie and Peter) who pub-crawl and party to their, undoubted, premature graves.
Starting by reviewing the reviewers (rather than the book) I am tempted to say (snobbishly?) is that you either get this or you don't. Like reading War and Peace not knowing it is going to be very long, heavy and set in Russia, or Robinson Crusoe not knowing it is about solitude, you might easily get off on the wrong foot. If not be thrown entirely.
However, please, don't be put off by bare headlines, topic or even the (much noted) loose meandering plot. Indeed marvel at its Houdini-like ability to break free of its, apparent, chains, handcuffs and heavy padlocks and come to the surface as a winner.
(Here we are in the land of aching limbs, borderline alcoholism, difficult bowl movements, false teeth and how difficult toes are to clip when clinically obese. And, I say with a chuckle, much, much, more and worse!)
If I was to give one negative, it does little for women. Maybe men get the wives they deserve and maybe women do bitch behind each others back in real life, but they come across as an extra jaded lot.
However it doesn't follow the comedy rule of women being the stay-at-homes armed with curlers, a hairnet and a rolling pin. Far from it, they have an eye for a party as much as the men. Even, as you would find by reading it, have very different agendas and priorities to the men folk.
Equally the massive lead character of Weaver does diminish and overshadow the others who, at least, don't like causing trouble for its own sake and are less inclined to be let their mouths run away with them.
One of these books that if you manage to read it once you will end up reading it twice...
Despite the passing of time (in which he has gained a CBE and a minor talking-heads TV career - seemingly based on knowing a, here renamed, Dylan Thomas) he is soon back as leader-of-the-gang: The "Old Devils" (Malcolm, Charlie and Peter) who pub-crawl and party to their, undoubted, premature graves.
Starting by reviewing the reviewers (rather than the book) I am tempted to say (snobbishly?) is that you either get this or you don't. Like reading War and Peace not knowing it is going to be very long, heavy and set in Russia, or Robinson Crusoe not knowing it is about solitude, you might easily get off on the wrong foot. If not be thrown entirely.
However, please, don't be put off by bare headlines, topic or even the (much noted) loose meandering plot. Indeed marvel at its Houdini-like ability to break free of its, apparent, chains, handcuffs and heavy padlocks and come to the surface as a winner.
(Here we are in the land of aching limbs, borderline alcoholism, difficult bowl movements, false teeth and how difficult toes are to clip when clinically obese. And, I say with a chuckle, much, much, more and worse!)
If I was to give one negative, it does little for women. Maybe men get the wives they deserve and maybe women do bitch behind each others back in real life, but they come across as an extra jaded lot.
However it doesn't follow the comedy rule of women being the stay-at-homes armed with curlers, a hairnet and a rolling pin. Far from it, they have an eye for a party as much as the men. Even, as you would find by reading it, have very different agendas and priorities to the men folk.
Equally the massive lead character of Weaver does diminish and overshadow the others who, at least, don't like causing trouble for its own sake and are less inclined to be let their mouths run away with them.
One of these books that if you manage to read it once you will end up reading it twice...
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I first read this book when it came out and I didn't like it all that much. I liked his brighter kind of shinier books like 'Lucky Jim' and 'Stanley and the Women' better. However nearing the age of Amis's characters in this book I am having a right Amis binge (I am talking senior) now and I found this much more compelling.
As usual with Amis the male characters are really what the book is about, the women are a bit thin. These men are mostly fat, colossally unfit drunkards with heroic endurability and considerable tolerance for their lives, and a willingness to stick together. They are also at times very intelligent and funny. They shoulder life's difficulties with massive doses of super-bitchy humour.
The Welsh thing is interesting. Amis is of all men the most English, of all writers I should say. He has even written novels about how much he hates abroad. Wales is very definitely not England, but it is not abroad either. But in England you have to have a ticket to do Wales.
Amis seems to me to have put more into this than most of his books and the humour is as distilled as the whisky all the men seem to take their morning bath in. I would say it does for old age what 'Take a Girl Like You' does for courting. Now there's an old word for you.
As usual with Amis the male characters are really what the book is about, the women are a bit thin. These men are mostly fat, colossally unfit drunkards with heroic endurability and considerable tolerance for their lives, and a willingness to stick together. They are also at times very intelligent and funny. They shoulder life's difficulties with massive doses of super-bitchy humour.
The Welsh thing is interesting. Amis is of all men the most English, of all writers I should say. He has even written novels about how much he hates abroad. Wales is very definitely not England, but it is not abroad either. But in England you have to have a ticket to do Wales.
Amis seems to me to have put more into this than most of his books and the humour is as distilled as the whisky all the men seem to take their morning bath in. I would say it does for old age what 'Take a Girl Like You' does for courting. Now there's an old word for you.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The balance of action is wrong
I was attracted to this novel by the name of the author and the mention on the front cover of the Booker Prize. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Thoughtful reader
Sad Story, Badly Bound
The story is sad and told in a rather jerky style, as if written in spurts over several years. But what sent me to the publisher with complaints is the binding. Read more
Published 15 months ago by R. J. Scott
Good Enough
In my quest to finish off the Booker Prize winners, the book award I respect the most, I picked up a copy of the hard-to-find "Old Devils" by Kingsley Amis. Read more
Published on 12 Aug 2008 by jeff knapp
a great book - a great writer's best book !
THE OLD DEVILS is the masterpiece of Sir Kingsley Amis. A wonderful, funny and touching novel, perhaps it is the best book on retirement ? (At 30, I don't know enough to comment ! Read more
Published on 10 Aug 2001
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