The Green Man

Name: The Green Man
Brand: Blackstone Audiobooks
Availability: InStock
Author: Kingsley Amis
ISBN: 9798212185356

Author: Kingsley Amis

Narrator: Joe Dixon

Unabridged: 7 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Published: 04/25/2023

Categories: Fiction, Classic, Satire, Ghost, World Literature

Synopsis

Maurice Allington has reached middle age and is haunted by death. As he says, “I honestly can’t see why everybody who isn’t a child, everybody who’s theoretically old enough to have understood what death means, doesn’t spend all his time thinking about it. It’s a pretty arresting thought.” He also happens to own and run a country inn that is haunted. The Green Man opens as Maurice’s father drops dead (had he seen something in the room?) and continues as friends and family convene for the funeral.Maurice’s problems are many and increasing: How to deal with his own declining health? How to reach out to a teenage daughter who watches TV all the time? How to get his best friend’s wife in the sack? How to find another drink? (And another.) And then there is always death.The Green Man is a ghost story that hits a live nerve, a very black comedy with an uncannily happy ending: in other words, Kingsley Amis at his best.

About Kingsley Amis

Kingsley (William) Amis, novelist, poet, and critic, took his MA at Oxford and was a lecturer in English at Swansea and Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. A satirist and debunker of note, he is best known for such social comedies as his first novel, Lucky Jim (1954), but also saw science fiction as an ideal medium for satirical and sociological extrapolation. Amis’ controversial artistic evolution from supposed radical to national institution was neatly summed up by his receipt of a knighthood in 1990.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on August 22, 2023

The range of good writing by Kingsley Amis (father of the living author, Martin) is amazing. He wrote poetry, short stories and novels that have been classified as travel, humor, alternate history, dystopian, science fiction and spy. His Lucky Jim is one of the funniest novels I have read. The Green......more

Goodreads review by Vit on May 04, 2017

The end of the sixties of the last century… What may that mean? It means the sexual revolution, an increased interest in occult subjects and mysticism and desire to change the state of mind with all sorts of psychotropic stuffs. Kingsley Amis was the one who decided to pack all those signs of new ep......more

Goodreads review by aPriL does feral sometimes on January 21, 2015

I think this book is a perfect ghost story, with everything that is supposed to be there, there, per tradition. Maurice Allington owns The Green Man, an Inn which has been in existence for 190 years on the same site near Fareham, 40 miles from London. The Inn was fully restored in 1961, but the best......more

Goodreads review by David on January 18, 2015

Maurice Allington is a fifty something, twice married, inn keeper/hotelier. For Maurice, life is a high speed, roller-coaster ride of juggling his various commitments - in this case 'commitment' equates to womanizing, drinking heavily, running his period inn The Green Man, and embellishing his estab......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on July 30, 2010

For whatever reason, Kingsley Amis and I seem to genuinely click. At least I think so based upon the level of enjoyment I got from this unusual little book. There is a genuine quality to his literary voice, which when combined with his certain sense of humour, very much reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut (......more

Quotes

“The Green Man is an extremely funny book, filled with slapstick, parody and satire. Indeed, the success of this short novel depends very much on the balance that Amis maintains between fear and laughter.'’ New York Times

“Contains all the best and familiar Amis qualities—including superb sexual comedy.” Sunday Times

“It is no small thing to have written a good ghost story; to have written a ghost story that is also a major novel is nothing short of miraculous.” Book World

“What makes The Green Man readable and re-readable is the skill with which Amis, like Henry James before him, turns the narrative screw. It is, quite simply, a rattling good ghost story.” The Times (UK)