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The Green Man

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The Green Man

By: Kingsley Amis
Narrated by: Joe Dixon
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Like all good coaching inns, The Green Man is said to boast a resident ghost: Dr Thomas Underhill, a notorious 17th-century practitioner of black arts and sexual deviancy. However, the landlord, Maurice Allington, is the sole witness to the renaissance of the malevolent Underhill. Led by an anxious desire to vindicate his sanity, Allington strives to uncover the key to Underhill's satanic powers. All while the skeletons in Allington's own cupboard rattle to get out.

©1969 Kingsley Amis (P)2020 Penguin Audio Classics Ghosts Horror Haunted Scary
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A trip to middle class, middle England of the 60’s. Evocative and mannered in a way I didn’t see when it was first published. I enjoyed it hugely.

So if it’s time.

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Amis was adept at experimenting with different genres, and putting his own distinctive mark on them. In this case, it’s the supernatural. The Green Man is an affectionate tribute, in part, to classic horror writer MR James. But it also allows Amis to ruminate on life, the universe and pretty much everything, with a focus on religion and the midlife crisis, broadly speaking. The protagonist, Maurice Allington, 53, is an Amis-like figure, who drinks too much and has a complicated love life while running a country inn - which turns out to be haunted. A former resident was basically a kind of scholar and medieval sorcerer. The story raises the question - is our narrator seeing things, because of his alcohol consumption, or are there actually ghosts plaguing The Green Man pub and restaurant? In some ways, the most memorable aspects of this novel are the diversions and discursive parts where we’re treated to mini-essays about everything from boozing to spirituality, and more. You suspect that this is really Amis himself speaking, in philosophical mode. I love his waspish and caustic humour which even back then (in the late 1960s) might have been seen by some as politically incorrect - it went on to be regarded as such in subsequent decades, and remains so. Now you wonder whether some of Amis’s work might merit a trigger warning… I laughed out loud while listening to The Green Man. The narration is good. I’m an MR James fan so also loved the ghostly goings-on and liked the character of Thomas Underhill, who haunts The Green Man. More people should read Amis. This is a brilliant and memorable listen (also check out the 1990 BBC TV adaptation, starring Albert Finney).

Risqué supernatural comedy

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Fruity excursion into genre fiction with this 1969 ghost story from that mayfly doyen of the British post-war literary scene, Kingsley Amis. Centred around a lecherous reprobate angling for a threesome in the wake of his father's death, 'The Green Man' features the ghost of a 17th century occultist, a Jack-In-The-Green-style homunculus and even an encounter with God. It all sounded so promising yet I found this book a flavourless chore. Rightly or wrongly, I've always pegged Amis père as typical of a certain strain of 20th century British fiction: smug, parochial and self-absorbed, and this is all of those things, but it's also just a bit dull. Amis writes some great lines and there are plenty of funny, caustic observations, but it's complacent and self-satisfied; the ghostly elements are neither scary nor metaphorically profound; the character study one of someone in whom I'm just not that interested. Maybe it's me; 'The Green Man' has gathered some glowing reviews over the years, but I struggled to finish it. I nearly bailed at the halfway mark and I'm indifferent to having stayed till the end.
Still, Joe Dixon's narration is excellent. His delivery is pitched somewhere between the bluff patriarchs of 1970s British TV drama and a gruff, contemporary edge. It kept me listening longer than the material really merited.

The Beige Bore

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The throaty delivery perhaps appropriate more to a gin drinker than the Olympian whisky-gulper narrator Maurice Allingham: but it works very well, bringing out the feeling I have always had abt this marvellous novel, that alcoholism is just as frightening as ghosts; more reliably horrible, anyway.

Nicely done

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Really enjoyed the story though not usually my genre.Narrated brilliantly.This is my second Kingsley Amis book and not disappointed.

A good listen

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