Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by biaseelaender
The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
2.0
"Somebody's got to say all those things."
"Oh no they haven't. Well wait a minute, perhaps they have. There's an awful lot of filling-in to be done in life, isn't there?"
There's an awful lot of filling-in between the covers of this book. I understand that this is a novel about retired people getting drunk and cheating on each other, and a lot of the monotony was showing us just how empty their lives are. I was just so bored.
After "Lucky Jim", this was especially disappointing. There are a few laugh-out-loud moments, such as when the men reflect upon the couple who can never be found at the same place at the same time ("see, if we were in a detective story, there'd only be one of them"), or one particularly nice chapter which focuses on the events of one night. There were some great lines in here, it just didn't hold together as a novel.
Altogether, I just wanted it to end. So badly. Anyway, here are some characters whose POV we did not get who would have made this much more fun:
- NELLY, the black lab puppy. Amis' descriptions of her actions were so spot-on, she made everything better and got me temporarily interested.
-VICTOR, Charlie's gay brother who is the only sane person in this town and also drove I don't know how many miles in the middle of the night to give him his anxiety meds after Al*m screwed up. He is also solely responsible for the restaurant that's supposed to be his and Charlie's.
-DOROTHY, the drunken old lady who just wants to share her encyclopaedic knowledge about New Zealand and Russian and everything but gets shut off because all everyone ever wants to talk about is who is cheating on whom.
-PERCY, Dorothy's husband.
-DUNCAN, Al*m's deaf brother who "doesn't like to be spoken to because people expect him to say things back". Same.
Final thoughts, so I never have to think of this book again:
- I want to free Nelly the lab from those pages
-Rhiannon is like an elderly version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. Manic Pixie Dream Senior Citizen.
-Peter and Rhiannon are actually perfect for each other, as they both seem to not care about anything in particular. Neutral Neutrals.
-Charlie's roasting of Al*m's book was spot-on.
"Oh no they haven't. Well wait a minute, perhaps they have. There's an awful lot of filling-in to be done in life, isn't there?"
There's an awful lot of filling-in between the covers of this book. I understand that this is a novel about retired people getting drunk and cheating on each other, and a lot of the monotony was showing us just how empty their lives are. I was just so bored.
After "Lucky Jim", this was especially disappointing. There are a few laugh-out-loud moments, such as when the men reflect upon the couple who can never be found at the same place at the same time ("see, if we were in a detective story, there'd only be one of them"), or one particularly nice chapter which focuses on the events of one night. There were some great lines in here, it just didn't hold together as a novel.
Altogether, I just wanted it to end. So badly. Anyway, here are some characters whose POV we did not get who would have made this much more fun:
- NELLY, the black lab puppy. Amis' descriptions of her actions were so spot-on, she made everything better and got me temporarily interested.
-VICTOR, Charlie's gay brother who is the only sane person in this town and also drove I don't know how many miles in the middle of the night to give him his anxiety meds after Al*m screwed up. He is also solely responsible for the restaurant that's supposed to be his and Charlie's.
-DOROTHY, the drunken old lady who just wants to share her encyclopaedic knowledge about New Zealand and Russian and everything but gets shut off because all everyone ever wants to talk about is who is cheating on whom.
-PERCY, Dorothy's husband.
-DUNCAN, Al*m's deaf brother who "doesn't like to be spoken to because people expect him to say things back". Same.
Final thoughts, so I never have to think of this book again:
- I want to free Nelly the lab from those pages
-Rhiannon is like an elderly version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. Manic Pixie Dream Senior Citizen.
-Peter and Rhiannon are actually perfect for each other, as they both seem to not care about anything in particular. Neutral Neutrals.
-Charlie's roasting of Al*m's book was spot-on.