Girl, 20

by Kingsley Amis, Oliver Chris (Read by)

Overview

Kingsley Amis, along with being the funniest English writer of his generation, was a great chronicler of the fads and absurdities of his age, and Girl, 20 is a delightfully incisive dissection of the flower-power phase of the 1960s.

Amis’s antihero, Sir Roy Vandervane, a conductor and composer who bears more than a passing resemblance to Leonard Bernstein, is a pillar of the establishment who has fallen hard for protest, bellbottoms, and the electric guitar. And since vain Sir Vandervane is a great success, he is also free to pursue his greatest failing: a taste for younger and younger women.

Highborn hippie Sylvia—not, in fact, twenty—is his latest infatuation and a threat to his whole family, from his drama-queen wife, Kitty, to his long-suffering daughter, Penny.

All this is recounted by Douglas Yandell, a music critic with his own love problems, who finds that he too has a part in this story of botched artistry, bumbling celebrity, and scheming family, in a time that, for all its high-minded talk, is as low and dishonest as any other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798212185387
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	05/30/2023
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kingsley Amis's (1922-1995) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of the Second World War. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism and short stories. He received a knighthood in 1990.

Oliver Chris is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“For satiric ends the cast of characters has been adroitly shaped to expose a sort of folie à deux in which youth and an aging misleader of youth contribute equally to the mischief.” —The New York Times
 
“I never found Lucky Jim—which launched Kingsley Amis—all that funny, but Girl, 20 is. It’s one of those deft comedies the British seem to specialize in—a story that makes us laugh without being outrageous, manic, obscene, anti-patriotic or ethnic. It satirizes society without trying to bring it crashing down around our ears. It does not smear the Absurd like catchup on everything in sight. There is no gimmicky situation to set you thinking of Alan Arkin or Woody Allen. Its effects are derived mostly from its characters, who are all recognizable contemporary types. Their actions are funny not because they are inconsistent—the famous non sequitur syndrome invented by American wits—but because they are not, because these people keep plugging away, with varying degrees of ingenuity and success, at the peculiar, but not unusual stratagems for getting what they want.... Sir Roy is a first-class character, possibly Amis’s best.” —Anatole Broyard, The New York Times
 
“As always, Amis’s aim at the modern world, not to mention eternal human foibles, is dead on.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“After the early splash with Lucky Jim, Kingsley’s books got better and better, until a peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he published The Green Man; Girl, 20 (my favorite); and Ending Up.” —Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Atlantic Monthly
 
“In his rollicking novel about the absurdities of the Sixties, Girl, 20, Kingsley Amis created a character who responded to each outbreak of pseudery with a phrase that he loathed. ‘School of Thought!’ he would exclaim; or ‘Christian Gentleman!’ ” —The Daily Telegraph
 
“In this book Sir Roy Vandervane at 54 embodies the best of the past, in that he is a talented symphonic conductor, good violinist, knowledgeable composer. He is also selling out to the future and the present, as represented by his long hair, his rich man’s radical chic, permissiveness, with-it views on everything including rock music, and above all a bird named Sylvia who is just one-third as old as Roy.... This precocious little horror is a successful creature, one of those arrogant bullies of spontaneity who will imply that you are fascist if you make unhip remarks like ‘what time is it’ or ‘where are we going?’ Amis scores such precise hints as having Sir Roy guess wrong ‘about what Sylvia would like to do,’ itself such a substantial proportion of her total outlook upon the world.” —Robert Pinsky, Los Angeles Times
 
“Amis was always honest enough to say that he was capable of drawing on feelings of his own that he found less than admirable. The absolutely necessary novel here is Girl, 20, in which the character of whom Amis most disapproves politically is also made irresistibly charming, and in which—this is a really brilliant knight’s move—the activity on which Amis himself had expended the most time (adultery) is shown by the actions of this very charmer as destructive to all parties.” —Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic Monthly
 
“His novels of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which was in many ways his most confident and interesting period, include two powerfully expressive, minatory masterpieces in Ending Up and Girl, 20.” —Philip Hensher, The Spectator

Editorial Reviews

Sir Roy is a first-class character, possibly Amis’s best.””

New York Times Book Review

Amis’s aim at the modern world, not to mention eternal human foibles, is dead on.”

|Los Angeles Times

 “As always, Amis’s aim at the modern world, not to mention eternal human foibles, is dead on.” —Los Angeles Times

“After the early splash with Lucky Jim, Kingsley’s books got better and better, until a peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he published The Green Man; Girl, 20 (my favorite); and Ending Up.” —Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Atlantic Monthly

“In Girl, 20 the character of whom Amis most disapproves politically is also made irresistibly charming, while—this is a really brilliant knight’s move—the activity on which Amis himself had expended the most time (adultery) is shown by the actions of this very charmer as destructive to all parties.”—Christopher Hitchens

“For satiric ends the cast of characters has been adroitly shaped to expose a sort of folie à deux in which youth and an aging misleader of youth contribute equally to the mischief.” —The New York Times
 
“I never found Lucky Jim—which launched Kingsley Amis—all that funny, but Girl, 20 is. It’s one of those deft comedies the British seem to specialize in—a story that makes us laugh without being outrageous, manic, obscene, anti-patriotic or ethnic. It satirizes society without trying to bring it crashing down around our ears. It does not smear the Absurd like catchup on everything in sight. There is no gimmicky situation to set you thinking of Alan Arkin or Woody Allen. Its effects are derived mostly from its characters, who are all recognizable contemporary types. Their actions are funny not because they are inconsistent—the famous non sequitur syndrome invented by American wits—but because they are not, because these people keep plugging away, with varying degrees of ingenuity and success, at the peculiar, but not unusual stratagems for getting what they want.... Sir Roy is a first-class character, possibly Amis’s best.” —Anatole Broyard, The New York Times
 
“In his rollicking novel about the absurdities of the Sixties, Girl, 20, Kingsley Amis created a character who responded to each outbreak of pseudery with a phrase that he loathed. ‘School of Thought!’ he would exclaim; or ‘Christian Gentleman!’ ” —The Daily Telegraph
 
“In this book Sir Roy Vandervane at 54 embodies the best of the past, in that he is a talented symphonic conductor, good violinist, knowledgeable composer. He is also selling out to the future and the present, as represented by his long hair, his rich man’s radical chic, permissiveness, with-it views on everything including rock music, and above all a bird named Sylvia who is just one-third as old as Roy.... This precocious little horror is a successful creature, one of those arrogant bullies of spontaneity who will imply that you are fascist if you make unhip remarks like ‘what time is it’ or ‘where are we going?’ Amis scores such precise hints as having Sir Roy guess wrong ‘about what Sylvia would like to do,’ itself such a substantial proportion of her total outlook upon the world.” —Robert Pinsky, Los Angeles Times
 
“His novels of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which was in many ways his most confident and interesting period, include two powerfully expressive, minatory masterpieces in Ending Up and Girl, 20.” —Philip Hensher, The Spectator

From the Publisher

The cast of characters has been adroitly shaped to expose a sort of folie à deux in which youth and an aging misleader of youth contribute equally to the mischief.”

New York Times

His rollicking novel about the absurdities of the Sixties.”

Daily Telegraph (London)

In Girl, 20 the character of whom Amis most disapproves politically is also made irresistibly charming.”

#1 New York Times bestselling author Christopher Hitchens