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The Folks That Live On The Hill
Kingsley Amis
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
9 people are currently reading
190 people want to read
About the author
Kingsley Amis
210 books554 followersBest known novels of British writer Sir Kingsley William Amis include
Lucky Jim
(1954) and
The Old Devils
(1986).
This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.
William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.
Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner
This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.
William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.
Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
March 5, 2021
In the course of a varied reading life, you encounter a lot of writers of serious talent, and what they are trying to achieve is so different from one to the next that attempting to put them in any sort of ranking order can seem futile. How can you compare (say) Evelyn Waugh with Elmore Leonard? Or Iris Murdoch with Ngaio Marsh? Nevertheless, if push came to shove and my life (somehow) depended on it, I would say that my favourite writer is Kingsley Amis.
This is primarily to do with style. The thing about Amis is that he is a proper writer. Not just a journeyman storyteller for whom words are a necessary tool of the trade. He writes sentences that fizz and pop. He is the kind of writer (becoming ever rarer) whom you can read simply for the joy and pleasure in the way he expresses himself. He belongs to the old school of novelists, in which the point of a sentence was not just to get Terry safely across the road, or to express Brenda’s opinion on avocados, but to do each of these things plus give intrinsic pleasure in the reading.
Plot-wise, this a “tangled web” type of affair. The central figure is Harry. The primary business of the novel is Harry’s circle of relatives and near-relatives, their doings and sayings, their relations with Harry and between themselves and so forth. There’s also the business of painting a kind of word picture of life in a particular area of London at a particular time as lived by the type of person that Harry is - the pubs, the mini-cabs, the shops, clubland and so forth. It’s a very well drawn world, niftily observed.
There are various kinds of shenanigans perpetrated by Harry’s brother, son, sort-of-niece, sister-in-law. They affect Harry and others in different ways. Things work out pretty much OK in the end - this may disappoint a certain class of modern reader who prefers thing not to work out OK, in the service of gritty realism or because happy endings are bourgeois or something.
The depiction of the life of Fiona, an alcoholic sort-of-dependent of Harry’s is remarkable and worthy of mention both for the quality of its rendering and as one in the eye to those simpletons who go on about Amis hating women, not knowing how to write them etc. As in most of his books, it is the women who come off much the best in this one as far as being decent, rounded, caring human beings are concerned.
This is primarily to do with style. The thing about Amis is that he is a proper writer. Not just a journeyman storyteller for whom words are a necessary tool of the trade. He writes sentences that fizz and pop. He is the kind of writer (becoming ever rarer) whom you can read simply for the joy and pleasure in the way he expresses himself. He belongs to the old school of novelists, in which the point of a sentence was not just to get Terry safely across the road, or to express Brenda’s opinion on avocados, but to do each of these things plus give intrinsic pleasure in the reading.
Plot-wise, this a “tangled web” type of affair. The central figure is Harry. The primary business of the novel is Harry’s circle of relatives and near-relatives, their doings and sayings, their relations with Harry and between themselves and so forth. There’s also the business of painting a kind of word picture of life in a particular area of London at a particular time as lived by the type of person that Harry is - the pubs, the mini-cabs, the shops, clubland and so forth. It’s a very well drawn world, niftily observed.
There are various kinds of shenanigans perpetrated by Harry’s brother, son, sort-of-niece, sister-in-law. They affect Harry and others in different ways. Things work out pretty much OK in the end - this may disappoint a certain class of modern reader who prefers thing not to work out OK, in the service of gritty realism or because happy endings are bourgeois or something.
The depiction of the life of Fiona, an alcoholic sort-of-dependent of Harry’s is remarkable and worthy of mention both for the quality of its rendering and as one in the eye to those simpletons who go on about Amis hating women, not knowing how to write them etc. As in most of his books, it is the women who come off much the best in this one as far as being decent, rounded, caring human beings are concerned.
August 11, 2022
Riddled with slurs, the only mention of skin colour is to describe POC, never white people. The only non-straight character is in an abusive relationship. The only solace being the book came from a charity shop.
June 22, 2017
Amis’s blinding wit can’t always rescue this poisonously misanthropic book about outwardly avuncular academic Harry Caldecote and his troubled family: the bereaved Clare, alcoholic Fiona, henproteckted Freddie, brutalised Bunty, and feckless, possibly criminal Piers, who exist in a Torily-realised London of crushing mundanity, waspish disgust and drab, brownly toneless multiculturalism. And at times even that voice fails altogether, turning in on itself to birth such laboriously self-satisfied sentences as the Amis of Lucky Jim would himself have lampooned, and necessitating that one read each of them several times to unpick the text, subtext, etc. That’s a parody of one of them.
There are others when the author’s unparalleled, deliciously English turn of phrase still dazzles, Amis cramming deadpan observations and dismissive putdowns into exposition and description, places where most other writers wouldn’t dare (or indeed bother). But he’s forever punching downwards, the malevolence and jaundice of his worldview rendering his work less than human, while he articulates the working class experience about as effectively as David Mitchell attempting a cockney accent. Or Andrea Leadsom. Occasionally, particularly towards the end, he offers his characters a little solace and understanding – if not a lifeline – but for far too long Amis seems to treat his characters with contempt, smugly revelling in not only their imperfections, but in the misogyny and absence of compassion that he mistakes for charming roguishness.
It’s also boring: rooted in a time and place (the Primrose Hill of 1990) that seems not only fleeting but also desperately uninteresting, people by characters whom it’s difficult to care about, since the man who created them can’t really be bothered. Amis displays flashes of lucid empathy – particularly in the deeply moving final chapter – where he effectively humanises and empathises with Clare, while I found the passages dealing with why an alcoholic like Fiona drinks truthful and even profound, but the bulk of this detached, inert book has uninteresting characters doing almost nothing aside from thinking about why they dislike one another, a prejudice that ultimately I couldn’t help but share.
There are others when the author’s unparalleled, deliciously English turn of phrase still dazzles, Amis cramming deadpan observations and dismissive putdowns into exposition and description, places where most other writers wouldn’t dare (or indeed bother). But he’s forever punching downwards, the malevolence and jaundice of his worldview rendering his work less than human, while he articulates the working class experience about as effectively as David Mitchell attempting a cockney accent. Or Andrea Leadsom. Occasionally, particularly towards the end, he offers his characters a little solace and understanding – if not a lifeline – but for far too long Amis seems to treat his characters with contempt, smugly revelling in not only their imperfections, but in the misogyny and absence of compassion that he mistakes for charming roguishness.
It’s also boring: rooted in a time and place (the Primrose Hill of 1990) that seems not only fleeting but also desperately uninteresting, people by characters whom it’s difficult to care about, since the man who created them can’t really be bothered. Amis displays flashes of lucid empathy – particularly in the deeply moving final chapter – where he effectively humanises and empathises with Clare, while I found the passages dealing with why an alcoholic like Fiona drinks truthful and even profound, but the bulk of this detached, inert book has uninteresting characters doing almost nothing aside from thinking about why they dislike one another, a prejudice that ultimately I couldn’t help but share.
November 14, 2020
Harry feels responsible for a loose set of people some of whom he's related to, some distantly connected. But though he's a selfish bastard he can't help bailing them all out, possibly because he, well, likes them. There's something to like even in alcoholic Fiona, necking bottles of cheap sherry in a council flat, and the mysterious Piers, who's always dropping hints that he's gay, or maybe a spy, or is he just a criminal? Bunty really is gay, and worries that her aunt by marriage (a past marriage of Harry's) will disapprove. The two Asian shopkeepers practise their English on their customers (Mustn't grumble! All be the same in a thousand years!). And Harry does his best to protect his wimpy brother from his controlling wife. Somehow everybody manages to steer round some pretty fearsome obstacles by pulling strings and calling in favours and all end up together for a drink in the local, where naturally the landlord thinks he's a bit of a card. English life in the 80s is much like life in the 50s, or the noughties... It seems to be just a novel. Just another Kingsley Amis novel. But it's really a story about what it is like to be alive and human in the late 80s in a particular place in London. It's also a multistorey tale including many different types of people. (Can they possibly all be connected, as in Dickens? They can.) There is no authorial voice, we just switch between POVs. The style is conversational, never literary. PS it's brilliant.
July 20, 2008
Another one of Kingsley Amis' hilarious takes on urban British life. This one is set in 1990 London, and the language and idioms are somewhat localized to that time and place; but enormously funny in Amis' unique drop-dead satirical style.
September 3, 2016
A brilliant book by a brilliant writer. Very funny and very poignant.
November 19, 2013
I found the character's very accessible in the most part (less so Freddie and Desiree), enjoyed the language greatly (I insisted on reading quite a few sentences aloud) and was sad to finish it. I particularly liked the chapters that followed Fiona.
December 22, 2013
Three and a half stars. The beginning was strange. But the second half was really excellent. He just outlined life it was interesting.
April 27, 2021
I have discovered another favorite author. I was laughing out loud. Love his quick wit and his convoluted sentences. It is just a joy to read.
April 8, 2025
I explored London's Primrose Hill area for the first time in August and as you may know, I like to read books set in the areas I visit. The only book I could find set in Primrose Hill was Kingsley Amis's 'The Folks That Live on the Hill'. Actually I did come across one other but it sounded really awful. So this one it was. It turned out to be pretty bad too. It was published in 1990 and set in 1990 (the year is mentioned in the book). 1990 is when I first lived in London and I can say London in 1990 was nothing like its portrayal in this book. None of the characters were likeable, but that's not always a bad thing. What I didn't like wasn't their unlikeable attitudes so much, but more that they were so outdated. I really felt like the novel should have been set in 1950s at least. An example is that two women going out for dinner with no men is something shocking and unusual. Er, no it wasn't. My female friends and I did it all the time. Then there were the attitudes to immigrants, women, gay people (there's a lesbian couple) and working class people. These weren't nice attitudes but I know even today their are plenty of people with racist, misogynistic, homophobic and classist attitudes. Again though, it wasn't just that the attitudes were unlikeable but that they were dated. Anyway, the story follows the lives of a group of people who live on the hill (Amis changes the name to Shepherd's hill). In the initial chapters we are introduced to the characters and in the later chapters their stories start to come together. It took me a while to get through even though it's not a big book. I just read a chapter or two at a time and that was more than enough. I'm pretty sure I've read Kingsley Amis before ('Stanley and His Women) but if I have it was so long ago that I don't remember the story or if I liked it.
November 18, 2025
The Folks That Live On The Hill by Magister Ludi Sir Kingsley Amis, compared favorably with his Booker Prize Winning Novel The Old Devils http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/05/t...
10 out of 10
The Folks That Live On The Hill is another sublime magnum opus from the magnificent Kingsley Amis, the twentieth novel, written in 1990, a work of outstanding value if you ask me, an admirer of this brilliant mind, I have read perhaps seventeen books by this magician, including Stanley and The Women http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/02/s... and I have been elated
The Memoirs http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/12/m... have been equally enchanting, with some innuendo, but overall, uncovering a character that is not perfect – who is, just god, and even He is not extant…Kingsley Amis said that ‘it is not that he does not believe, he hates Him- but for this reader it is clear that I would have loved to meet the man, it is the answer to one of those questions with what to take on an island, or who would you like to meet, if you had your choice.
From the astounding Intellectuals http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/i... by Paul Johnson we find that many of the luminaries of the past have been abominable in their lives, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, Jean- Jacques Rousseau…the latter has abandoned his children at the door of an orphanage, at a time when nine out of ten died in that situation
Harry Caldecote is the main character of this splendid novel – in fact, almost all the novels written by Kingsley Amis have been the perfect magnum opera for yours truly, there is the style, exquisite, erudite, amusing, challenging at times, a great feast, a festival of wonderful prose, enlighted by serene and sometimes satirical humor, it is nec plus ultra for me…there would be Marcel Proust http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/u... but I have to wonder how would, or will I take that sophisticated, demanding writing (there are phrases that go for pages) in the near future, when I plan to read the chef d’oeuvre again, but Kingsley Amis combines depth with hilarious segments.
Evidently, there is divine humor in A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, but in The Folks That Live on The Hill and other works of art with the Amis Sr. signature (Martin Amis is a titanic author, though Money and Time’s Arrow have been quite difficult for me) have humor at the core, even when Harry Caldecote has to deal with serious, dangerous issues, there is a smile on the face of the reader, as he finds about Freddie, the brother who lives in a sort of symbiosis with Desiree, his wife, but at the same time, it looks like an addiction, they each need the other, but they are not really in love, at times they hate one another…
Harry tries to take care of people, even those who do not have a proper claim on his munificence, like Bunty Streatfield, who had been married to Desmond (I think she calls him Dezzie) but now she is in a tumultuous, eventually violent relationship with the very vile, repugnant Popsy – given that the latter is a woman, and we are talking a lesbian affair, one should be careful with the words chose to describe it, or one must care for that if there is a sensitive audience, or anybody reaching this far…indeed, I am having fun with myself, introducing such provocative, sometimes a bit offensive material in these notes, looking to see what, if any reaction this provokes, and…nothing happens, there is this well received movie (which I had to stop after some fifteen minutes, too badass for me or something) Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, in this case it is Nothing, All The Time…except at times, there was some outrage from Trump Supporters, because I used to insert by feeling of degoulasse in here, at MAGA realms
Popsy kicks her lover, but the ex-husband, who loves Bunty does not get what Harry is telling him, that Bunty is still crazy about him, only not in a sexual way, the ex-spouse is attracted to women, and until he Dizzie) gets that into his head, there will be no progress, and one time, the frustrated Desmond gets drunk and pushes Bunty, it would be called harassment and abuse today, perhaps back in 1990 as well
We also have alcoholic Fiona, a niece of Harry’s first wife, a woman of some thirty years that the generous hero tries to help, though their connection is tenuous, they call him when the drunk woman is in serious trouble, which tends to happen often, for she drinks herself into oblivion, she has the conviction that she has inherited this manner from aunt Anne, there is an elements of genetics here, and indeed, I have read that we do have in our genes a tendency to repeat the mistakes of our parents and ancestors, there is even an inclination to watch a certain amount of television, written in the genes; this is not to say that we are doomed and all is written, there is a genetic code we need to be aware of.
Harry lives in the same house with his sister, Clare, he had divorced twice and in this he reminds me of The Banshees of Inisherin http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/01/t... which is see as the best film of 2002 and by a long shot, wherein the main personage also lives with his sister, until the latter has found a way to escape that island, where ‘everybody is dull, dull’- Harry may be on the point of going to America, just like we learn from the Memoirs of the author that it has happened to Kingsley Amis/
Freddie is the controversial, mysterious son, who looks like a fraudster ( a sort of small Trump) in the first few chapters, asking for money to put into dubious investments, connected with horrible liquids, moonshine-like, sold as vodka, which appear to be destined to fail absolutely, but somehow, he has a history of paying back (some of the) money he had asked for and maybe this time, with this grandiose scheme, he may even spread some wealth around…I came to the conclusion that no matter what the characters are, how they move about, if they do horrible things – say in One Fat Englishman http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/08/o... - the style of Kingsley Amis, his genius (and yes, I mean this, even if I have read somewhere, perhaps it was Kundera in his Unbearable Lightness of Being, that we must limit the use of genius to very few, otherwise it would get meaningless, Leonardo, Shakespeare, Einstein and maybe a couple more and that is it) dazzles, exhilarates and will always make me exultant and do this
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...
10 out of 10
The Folks That Live On The Hill is another sublime magnum opus from the magnificent Kingsley Amis, the twentieth novel, written in 1990, a work of outstanding value if you ask me, an admirer of this brilliant mind, I have read perhaps seventeen books by this magician, including Stanley and The Women http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/02/s... and I have been elated
The Memoirs http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/12/m... have been equally enchanting, with some innuendo, but overall, uncovering a character that is not perfect – who is, just god, and even He is not extant…Kingsley Amis said that ‘it is not that he does not believe, he hates Him- but for this reader it is clear that I would have loved to meet the man, it is the answer to one of those questions with what to take on an island, or who would you like to meet, if you had your choice.
From the astounding Intellectuals http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/i... by Paul Johnson we find that many of the luminaries of the past have been abominable in their lives, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, Jean- Jacques Rousseau…the latter has abandoned his children at the door of an orphanage, at a time when nine out of ten died in that situation
Harry Caldecote is the main character of this splendid novel – in fact, almost all the novels written by Kingsley Amis have been the perfect magnum opera for yours truly, there is the style, exquisite, erudite, amusing, challenging at times, a great feast, a festival of wonderful prose, enlighted by serene and sometimes satirical humor, it is nec plus ultra for me…there would be Marcel Proust http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/u... but I have to wonder how would, or will I take that sophisticated, demanding writing (there are phrases that go for pages) in the near future, when I plan to read the chef d’oeuvre again, but Kingsley Amis combines depth with hilarious segments.
Evidently, there is divine humor in A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, but in The Folks That Live on The Hill and other works of art with the Amis Sr. signature (Martin Amis is a titanic author, though Money and Time’s Arrow have been quite difficult for me) have humor at the core, even when Harry Caldecote has to deal with serious, dangerous issues, there is a smile on the face of the reader, as he finds about Freddie, the brother who lives in a sort of symbiosis with Desiree, his wife, but at the same time, it looks like an addiction, they each need the other, but they are not really in love, at times they hate one another…
Harry tries to take care of people, even those who do not have a proper claim on his munificence, like Bunty Streatfield, who had been married to Desmond (I think she calls him Dezzie) but now she is in a tumultuous, eventually violent relationship with the very vile, repugnant Popsy – given that the latter is a woman, and we are talking a lesbian affair, one should be careful with the words chose to describe it, or one must care for that if there is a sensitive audience, or anybody reaching this far…indeed, I am having fun with myself, introducing such provocative, sometimes a bit offensive material in these notes, looking to see what, if any reaction this provokes, and…nothing happens, there is this well received movie (which I had to stop after some fifteen minutes, too badass for me or something) Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, in this case it is Nothing, All The Time…except at times, there was some outrage from Trump Supporters, because I used to insert by feeling of degoulasse in here, at MAGA realms
Popsy kicks her lover, but the ex-husband, who loves Bunty does not get what Harry is telling him, that Bunty is still crazy about him, only not in a sexual way, the ex-spouse is attracted to women, and until he Dizzie) gets that into his head, there will be no progress, and one time, the frustrated Desmond gets drunk and pushes Bunty, it would be called harassment and abuse today, perhaps back in 1990 as well
We also have alcoholic Fiona, a niece of Harry’s first wife, a woman of some thirty years that the generous hero tries to help, though their connection is tenuous, they call him when the drunk woman is in serious trouble, which tends to happen often, for she drinks herself into oblivion, she has the conviction that she has inherited this manner from aunt Anne, there is an elements of genetics here, and indeed, I have read that we do have in our genes a tendency to repeat the mistakes of our parents and ancestors, there is even an inclination to watch a certain amount of television, written in the genes; this is not to say that we are doomed and all is written, there is a genetic code we need to be aware of.
Harry lives in the same house with his sister, Clare, he had divorced twice and in this he reminds me of The Banshees of Inisherin http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/01/t... which is see as the best film of 2002 and by a long shot, wherein the main personage also lives with his sister, until the latter has found a way to escape that island, where ‘everybody is dull, dull’- Harry may be on the point of going to America, just like we learn from the Memoirs of the author that it has happened to Kingsley Amis/
Freddie is the controversial, mysterious son, who looks like a fraudster ( a sort of small Trump) in the first few chapters, asking for money to put into dubious investments, connected with horrible liquids, moonshine-like, sold as vodka, which appear to be destined to fail absolutely, but somehow, he has a history of paying back (some of the) money he had asked for and maybe this time, with this grandiose scheme, he may even spread some wealth around…I came to the conclusion that no matter what the characters are, how they move about, if they do horrible things – say in One Fat Englishman http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/08/o... - the style of Kingsley Amis, his genius (and yes, I mean this, even if I have read somewhere, perhaps it was Kundera in his Unbearable Lightness of Being, that we must limit the use of genius to very few, otherwise it would get meaningless, Leonardo, Shakespeare, Einstein and maybe a couple more and that is it) dazzles, exhilarates and will always make me exultant and do this
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...
January 28, 2025
Reminiscent of his son's efforts in some parts - the descent of Fiona, for example, recalled Mary Lamb in Other People, with her bleak, helpless lostness. Also, the style switches - much more smoothly and expertly, and less self-advertisingly, than Martin's - from nightmarish, lurid, baroque, and caricatural to drawing-room comedy and sentimental set pieces.
Tiresome comparison I suppose, and only by the by, but there it is.
Amis liked to be provocative, and developed a caricature persona as a gleeful reactionary, and there are certainly lines that could be taken amiss, no pun intended - truly. But it's also very striking that the glaring defects of the apparent 'good guys' (with the exception of Clare, I think?) and the merits of even the most unlikeably depicted characters (even Desiree - though I suppose not the Caldecote mother or Popsy - well, that's spoiled my thesis...) are given space in the spotlight. Not a book of "binary values", thankfully.
Two of the main characters particularly - Harry and Fiona - seem very much to embody aspects of Amis himself, in their actions, inactions and introspections.
The final scene is nicely composed, if rather East Enders-ishly sentimental, almost happy-ever-after, and ties everything up, with one or two bonus surprises revolving around Piers. It's a shame it probably won't be filmed in the next decade or two - the scenes are just waiting to be put on screen.
Astonishing that he could write so well and with such control while, by all accounts, systematically drinking himself to death.
Tiresome comparison I suppose, and only by the by, but there it is.
Amis liked to be provocative, and developed a caricature persona as a gleeful reactionary, and there are certainly lines that could be taken amiss, no pun intended - truly. But it's also very striking that the glaring defects of the apparent 'good guys' (with the exception of Clare, I think?) and the merits of even the most unlikeably depicted characters (even Desiree - though I suppose not the Caldecote mother or Popsy - well, that's spoiled my thesis...) are given space in the spotlight. Not a book of "binary values", thankfully.
Two of the main characters particularly - Harry and Fiona - seem very much to embody aspects of Amis himself, in their actions, inactions and introspections.
The final scene is nicely composed, if rather East Enders-ishly sentimental, almost happy-ever-after, and ties everything up, with one or two bonus surprises revolving around Piers. It's a shame it probably won't be filmed in the next decade or two - the scenes are just waiting to be put on screen.
Astonishing that he could write so well and with such control while, by all accounts, systematically drinking himself to death.
December 22, 2024
Kingers usually clicks with me almost immediately but other than a few chuckles along the way, this one didn’t do the job. Only four years passed between the publication of The Old Devils (his greatest novel, or equal-greatest, with Lucky Jim) and this novel. The decline seems to have been swift and steep. I suspect this might also have been one of the novels that Martin said just didn’t work for him.
March 13, 2018
Posh Brits being horrible. Somewhat amusing but not lol.
April 20, 2020
Very entertaining, full of recognisable characters of the type one may still encounter in Primrose Hill.
October 28, 2021
As you’d expect a well written book, dryly amusing about life in Primrose Hill in the 1980s but nothing special so 3 stars
March 23, 2022
Nice. A little wordy.
May 6, 2022
did not finish - just did not interest me sufficiently to continue reading.
July 1, 2024
A quick, light read - typical Kingsley Amis in its style and tone.
February 7, 2022
This is a 3,5 star read for me, with some enjoyable bits, but I had difficulty getting into the book. Maybe because I could not relate to the characters.
November 2, 2014
I so wanted to like this book but it was terrible: turgid, dull and populated with the most horrible characters. There was no middle ground - people were either upper-class snobs or degenerate scum but they all shared the common ground of being thoroughly unpleasant.
The estranged husband who attempts to rape his lesbian wife (a matter glossed over with the lightest rap of his knuckles); the grotesque, controlling sister-in-law who dominates her timid husband; the alcoholic slattern; the violent, sneering lesbian lover; the feckless, wastrel son; even the central character is a rampant misogynist who frequently expresses unpalatable racist and homophobic views (although so does everyone, with even the women using terms like 'dyke' about one another).
The prose is at times unbearable - convoluted, confusing and unattractive, while nothing of any consequence occurs until the last quarter of the book, leaving the reader to trudge through page after page of unwieldy sentences and unconvincing and occasionally offensive dialogue.
I persisted until the end because I hold both Amis authors in high regard (Martin I could read quite contentedly forever) and really wanted to find some enjoyment somewhere in this novel but it was a futile exercise. Not the worst book I have ever read but sadly in the top ten.
The estranged husband who attempts to rape his lesbian wife (a matter glossed over with the lightest rap of his knuckles); the grotesque, controlling sister-in-law who dominates her timid husband; the alcoholic slattern; the violent, sneering lesbian lover; the feckless, wastrel son; even the central character is a rampant misogynist who frequently expresses unpalatable racist and homophobic views (although so does everyone, with even the women using terms like 'dyke' about one another).
The prose is at times unbearable - convoluted, confusing and unattractive, while nothing of any consequence occurs until the last quarter of the book, leaving the reader to trudge through page after page of unwieldy sentences and unconvincing and occasionally offensive dialogue.
I persisted until the end because I hold both Amis authors in high regard (Martin I could read quite contentedly forever) and really wanted to find some enjoyment somewhere in this novel but it was a futile exercise. Not the worst book I have ever read but sadly in the top ten.
August 8, 2011
The folks that live on Shephard's Hill form a diverse community. The reader follows their lives in extremely droll prose that is dense with subtle observations. Everyone experiences their little dramas, disappointments, unsatisfactory relationships, addictions, and life manages to go on. The story is told in brief vignettes from different perspectives. Quintessentially British.
January 25, 2012
I would give this a 4 but I found the beginning of the book to drag and it was difficult to follow. I nearly stopped reading it. When I reached the second half I couldn't put it down. It had a very nice feel good ending... Not nearly as funny as a typical Kingsley Amis book. I give it 3 1/2 and am now starting Jake's Thing.
September 19, 2010
Amis's laying out of plot points in this late novel is strangely confused, but the richness of character makes up for any extra effort on the part of the reader. Not a book for those with casual interest in the author, however -- I would only recommend this to the enthusiasts.
July 20, 2011
I do like a bit of Kingsley Amis, but just couldn't get on with this one. I wasn't particularly keen on any of the characters, apart from Claire, slightly. There was too much observation, and not enough action.
May 12, 2007
Again, not as funny as Lucky Jim (my gold standard of funniness), but pretty darn funny.
April 5, 2010
This was so awkwardly written that I had trouble getting into and concentrating on the story itself which, if truth be told, wasn't all that compelling anyway.
January 7, 2011
only finished by sheer determination...not funny...not wry.
September 12, 2011
Read in 1991
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