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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A GREEN MAN AND PINK ELEPHANTS, 26 Nov 2003
Some of the best and most entertaining fiction by Kingsley Amis is comparatively little known, and I am pleased to see The Green Man back in print. 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 original 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-spin – 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.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Whistle, and I just might come to you, 31 May 2009
M R James kept well away from the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue; towards the end of his life, he observed that writers of horror stories were beginning to "drag in sex, which is a fatal mistake; sex is tiresome enough in the novels; in a ghost story, or as the backbone of a ghost story, I have no patience with it". However, although "The Green Man" includes probably as much how's-your-father as any Amis novel, it is a worthy successor to the James tradition.
Maurice Allington, like most Amis heroes, is an intellectual snob, has a drink problem, and finds monogamy a severe challenge. So far par for the course. However, even by Amis standards this novel gets alarmingly close to his own situation at the time:
-Allington is coming to a crisis point in his marriage to his second wife ("Joyce"/ Elizabeth Jane Howard)
-He has difficulty connecting to his teenage daughter ("Amy"/the tragic Sally Amis)
-The only person who is his intellectual equal and who, while loving him, can put him in his place is his son ("Nick"/Martin Amis)
Thus Allington's mid-life crisis closely mirrors Amis' own malaise. The "struggling young academic" theme of the first four novels is left far behind, and Allington is faced with very strong intimations of mortality. The novel is a major step towards the ageing self-doubt of "Jake's Thing" and "Stanley and the Women".
Allington runs a country inn (it would now be called, to Amis' disgust, a gastropub) which has a well-documented ghost. Hitherto this has meant little more to him than a selling point to credulous guests, but the ghost gradually moves into Allington's life, ultimately offering him a Faustian pact. At first the ghost has an easy job, as the manifestations it creates are similar to the effects of the delirium tremens which Allington either already has experienced or is about to (it's not quite clear which). However, Allington grows into a worthy adversary for his spectral nemesis.
One of the amazon.com reviewers interprets the novel as a parody of another James - Henry, in "Turn of the Screw" (which I didn't finish - it didn't grab me, mea culpa). Scandalously, there are 13 reviews of "The Green Man" on amazon.com, but prior to mine only one on amazon.co.uk. A prophet in his own country ...
As always in Amis, there is humour, but it is less gratuitous and much darker than usual. The only real comic character is a 1960s "swinging vicar", and even here the vicar's trendiness is relevant to his part in the story.
Ghost stories often include an appearance of a saint, a good angel etc, but I can't think of many where a personification of God Himself appears. (This often happens in film, but not in literature.) This is a very difficult literary device to pull off, and Amis' success shows his skill. He even contrives to get God to discuss how accurately he (God) was portrayed by Milton.
As usual, Amis has several gratuitous axes to grind, including (surprisingly) attributing to Allington a hate of the "puny and piffling art" of novelists.
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by Kingsley Amis
by Kingsley Amis
by Kingsley Amis
by Kingsley Amis
by Kingsley Amis
