The Old Devils, Kingsley Amis
The Old Devils, Kingsley Amis
List: $22.95 | Sale: $16.07
Club: $11.47

The Old Devils

Author: Kingsley Amis

Narrator: David Sibley

Unabridged: 12 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/27/2023

Synopsis

A pub gathering of elderly married couples devolves into mischief in this “sharp and funny” British comedy about marriage, aging, and friendship.Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when “all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast”—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon. Long-dormant rivalries and romances are rudely awakened, as life at the Bible and Crown, the local pub, is changed irrevocably.Considered by Martin Amis to be Kingsley Amis’s greatest achievement—a book that “stands comparison with any English novel of the [twentieth] century”—The Old Devils confronts the attrition of aging with rare candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence.

About Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) was a popular and prolific British novelist, poet, satirist, and critic. LUCKY JIM, his first novel, appeared in 1954 to great acclaim and won a Somerset Maugham Award. Ultimately he published twenty-four novels, including science fiction and a James Bond sequel; more than a dozen collections of poetry, short stories, and literary criticism; restaurant reviews and three books about drinking; political pamphlets and a memoir; and more. Amis received the Booker Prize for his novel The Old Devils in 1986 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.

Reviews

Goodreads review by William2 on November 19, 2014

This novel is a story of old friends, married couples in southwestern Wales, and how their lives change when Alun and Rhiannon Weaver return to the country after Alun's long career in London. Alun has for some time been an ambitious media personality whose career resulted in the "popularization" of......more

Goodreads review by Karen on May 13, 2020

It was a surprise to many when Kinglsey Amis won the Booker Prize in 1986 for The Old Devils for this was an author who, according to the wisdom of the masses, was long past his prime. I don't know what the reaction was in Wales but I suspect the commentary there may have concentrated on his portray......more

Goodreads review by Palmyrah on November 26, 2023

Readers of John Updike's Couples will find the setup of this novel glancingly familiar: the circle of ingrown, septic-turning friendships among well-off married couples in a small town by the sea, the arrival of the 'new couple' that puts the cat among the pigeons. But where Updike's novel (much the......more

Goodreads review by James on February 03, 2016

This is such a wasted opportunity. Amis showed in 'Ending Up' how capable he was of writing dark humour into the vagaries of old age, making that alleged time of non-existence interesting and compulsive reading... perhaps twelve years later, when 'The Old Devils' saw the light of day, he was suffici......more

Goodreads review by Bette on August 20, 2009

I tend to be sympathetic to characters who are aging, fat, and unlovely, since I'm sure this is my destiny as well, but this bunch is so tedious that I couldn't muster any interest. I kept waiting for the humor to begin, but it never did. They're all just moldering away in Wales, pickling their live......more

Quotes

“Kingsley Amis’s most ambitious book is neither a sendup nor an exercise in some established genre. It sets forth a large cast of characters rendered in depth as well as on the surface. The Old Devils is also Mr. Amis’s most inclusive novel, encompassing kinds of feelings and tone that move from sardonic gloom to lyric tenderness.” New York Times

“The Old Devils is welcome evidence that the master remains masterful, able now to conjoin the mischievous with the mellow. As always, he is an insightful guide through the terrain where what is said is not meant and what is felt is not said, but where much of life is lived.” Los Angeles Times

“The book is, of course, highly comic in parts, but it is not a cozy read. The comedy has a crematorium whiff, dealing with such unmentionable topics as death, old age, hate, the ghastliness of marriages, the awfulness of the Welsh, and the decay of the flesh.” The Times (UK)

“The old, robust masculine tradition of British comedy from Fielding and Smollett continues in our own vernacular.” The New Yorker

”Amis once again transforms insult, ridicule, and reaction into high comic art.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Amis’ comedy of manners in the golden years is by turns sad and wicked, poignant and raucous, but always marvelously entertaining and affecting.” Booklist

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List