The Green Man

by Kingsley Amis

Other authorsMichael Dirda (Introduction)

Paperback, 2013

Status

Available

Call number

823.914

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

NYRB Classics (2013), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 256 pages

Description

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.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member jwhenderson

The Green Man is an enjoyable ghost story laced with the sort of witty dialogue common in Amis novels – and yet it constitutes a more than negligible statement about personality, purpose and ethics in the late-20th century world of its setting. Thomas Underhill’s lust is still evident after

three centuries of extra-corporeal existence – his mastery of the black arts and his circumvention of death have not cured him. The protagonist, Maurice Allington, sees something of Underhill in himself when his wife throws up his orchestration of the orgy as just a way of “experimenting” with other people, just as Underhill intended to experiment on Amy, and looks forward, as the novel closes, to the release from his personality that death will bring him. It is not a stretch to see in this Amis’s view of the new generation, with its proclivity for “experimental lifestyles” of all sorts that mainly take account only of the individual conducting the experiment (well-represented in the novel by the pseudo-radical priest Tom Rodney Sonnenschein). Indeed, God, as the young man, is seen in the novel as being a sort of experimenter Himself, which earns Him more than a whiff of Amis’s contempt.
The humor and irony abound in this light read from the pen of Kingsley Amis.

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LibraryThing member gbill

Maurice Allington has three main passions: drinking whiskey (and lots of it), trying to get his wife and a friend’s wife into bed for a ménage à trois, and finding out the truth about ghosts who appear to be haunting his pub. He also contemplates death, both somewhat fearfully, and also as a

welcome release from all his bothers in life. Overall he’s not a very admirable character, and I found it interesting that Amis once said in an interview that of all his heroes, he was most like Allington. ‘The Green Man’ is a bit of a dense read at times, but at the same time, the story is quite satisfying, and I liked Amis’ dry humor and very British way of ‘speaking’. The ghost story has nice elements of horror which are developed with great pace, the outcome of the 3-way is rather funny, and Amis also takes some cracks at religion and 60’s culture in the form of a young of a young reverend. Despite the sex, violence, and weighty theme of death, Amis exercises restraint, and is never lurid. This is a smart, fun ghost story.

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LibraryThing member nbsp

Bangup modern day ghost story. Very suspenseful and good insight into the character of the narrator, the alcoholic proprietor of the Green Man Inn restaurant.

LibraryThing member otterley

It might be slightly over-simplistic to characterise Kingsley Amis as a writer obsessed with sex, drink and death - but these are all present and in good order in the Green Man, in a way a slightly out of character ghost story. As ever, he is unsparing in his description of the author as self and

sex obsessed lush - the detail in his writing is characteristically rich and full, uncomfortable in confronting those less palatable elements of personality and putting them on the table to be dissected in detail. The plot is, as you'd expect from a ghost story, far-fetched - but the intense realism of the narrative makes it strangely believable. An oddity for Amis, but perhaps one of his more readable books.

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LibraryThing member ehines

For fans of Rickman, this is an interesting precursor to his work. Inetresting largely because Amis's sensibilities are so far removed from Rickman's. He generally does a good job with the characters, he's a bit clumsier than Rickman with the supernatural elements. But then again in a one-off

that's not as important.

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LibraryThing member quondame

Really not my thing, but well enough done. No one to like, though the moods were well done and the individuals mostly recognizable. Horror lite, really, though the horror of having to live with ones unlikable self should be more pervasive, it doesn't really seem to be.
Oh, avoid the introduction, it

is self important drivel.

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LibraryThing member xieouyang

Briefly, this is a story of a haunted inn owned by an alcoholic man. He runs the inn, named The Green Man, with his (second) wife and other assorted characters. His thirteen year-old daughter Amy lives with them, since her mother died in a a terrible car accident a year and a half before.
The story

is narrated by Maurice himself who is going through some traumatic times. He is self-absorbed, doesn't seem to care much for his wife and can't communicate much with his daughter. In addition to his heavy drinking he starts seeing a ghost- at one point I wasn't sure if it was drinking or really a ghost. HIs doctor friend Jack, whose wife Diane Maurice has an affair with, tells him it's delirium tremens. Additionally, his father dies suddenly. Actually not unexpected given that he was quite old and failing. But suspiciously he appears to have seen a ghost right before he died- did this apparition cause the death?
He becomes obsessed with the ghost and goes through several comical ghost-related scenes. The usual type of mumbo-jumbo one hears in ghost stories. Except that in this novel they are humorous. Particularly when Maurice enlists the help of the local priest to come to the inn and exorcise the ghost. The preacher takes it in good stride and goes through the motions.
Along the way, like all good ghost stories, there is a cemetery scene with digging a grave.
Of course, there is also a menage-a-trois with his wife and Diana, that takes an unexpected turn in the end and gives the novel an interesting resolution.

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LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50

It was pretty much impossible to have any sympathy for the main character in The Green Man by Kingsley Amis as it was established very quickly that he is an alcoholic, a neglectful father, an uncaring and absent-minded husband, a womanizer and, is having an affair with his friend’s wife. As the

owner of the ancient inn called The Green Man part of his hosting duties are to impart the rumors of ghostly visitations. But after he himself has an encounter he realizes that the ghosts are not only real but intend malice as well.

This is a man who was already suffering from nocturnal hallucinations and hypochondria so when he declares that he is seeing ghosts his friends and family decide he is experiencing the Dts. Over the course of five days this story unfolds partly with humor over life’s foibles and partly with chills over the supernatural occurrences. The Green Man appears to be a macabre parody of life and death and although I was never quite sure if this was a straight up ghost story or a crazy sex comedy, I did enjoy the ride it took me on. This blend of the occult, religion and sexual innuendo reminded me of many of the books that I read during the 1960s when all of these subjects were being closely examined. The Green Man is a short black comedy that I found quite entertaining.

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LibraryThing member DinadansFriend

When you buy an old Inn, it comes with left luggage. In this case it comes in the form of the ghost of the original owner, a ghost with a past of occultism, a connection with the devil himself, and definite plans about gaining new corporality. the cost of the haunt's plans are the death of the

father of our narrator, the Inn's owner, and the unearthing of a relic of the murderous ghost. Our hero has a serious drinking problem, and many of his acquaintance believe that his supernatural visitor is a sign of final delirium. But , the ghost's plans become revealed as continuously homicidal, and our hero Maurice, the narrator, finally takes steps to insure the defeat of evil. Amis' style is light and clever, and I view this as one of his better books.

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LibraryThing member Sean191

True to the blurb from the Times Literary Supplement on the back jacket, Amis had three stories rolled into one - a ghost story, a moral fable and a comedy of sorts. For me, it didn't work. The ghost story was pretty good. But the side story of his wife and mistress didn't blend well. The pacing

was fine and the climax (at least the one the main character was involved in) was good. But it felt like Amis made this more salacious to interest readers with a pretty tame story by today's standards, but going back 50 years, maybe it was something spicier.

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LibraryThing member larryking1

Maurice Allingham, a 1960's Englishman to the core, is one busy man. The Green Man describes, in beautifully delineated prose, his workday in loving detail, as he manages the 17th century hotel he owns on the outskirts of Cambridge. In fact, were it not for the circumstances within its pages, this

novel could just as well be the memoir of a brilliant man whose avocation of preparing meals, tending bar, purchasing wine and sundries, and entertaining guests would fit nicely on a shelf with memoirs, say, from Elizabeth Gilbert or Francis Mayles. But Maurice has bigger issues than theirs; for one, his non-stop drinking, becoming more and more pronounced as his day wears on. Second, Maurice is a serial adulterer. Even though he has a wonderful, loving, younger, second, 'trophy' wife, he wants more and more. One of the funnier sub-plots is wondering how will Maurice talk his latest 'conquest' into bed with his wife, and, moreover, how can he talk both of them, pardon my poor French, into what I believe is called 'a menage a trois?' (Not that I would even know what that could be...although perhaps, if prompted, I could guess.) Certainly, Maurice has a lot on his mind. But that is nothing, really, as his real crisis turns out to be otherworldly; you see, Maurice's hotel is haunted! And his "haunts" turn out to be a real horror show! I will leave you with this...a year preceding this novels publication, we saw Rosemary's Baby come into print; later, following The Green Man, titles like The Exorcist, The Other, Carrie, and Ghost Story. The Green Man fits right into this sequence, although it is quite the most literary, no surprise considering the source, that is, the written output of Kingsley Amis.

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LibraryThing member soylentgreen23

There's a lot to this slender novel. The main character runs a pub and hotel in the countryside, The Green Man, and is a drinker and a womaniser. But he is also beginning to see ghosts, and when he tells his friends and family nobody believes him - after all, he has a history of not playing

straight with the facts, and of drinking rather more than he should.

What starts as a comedy soon becomes something much more serious, and Amis manages this tonal shift adeptly. The writing is always top-notch, as one would expect from the family, and the book, though a relatively short read, leaves a lasting impression.

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LibraryThing member PilgrimJess

"I thought to myself how much more welcome a faculty of imagination would be if we could tell when it was at work and when not."

Maurice Allington, is the middle-aged proprietor of a 14th-century English inn called 'The Green Man' who lives on site with his second wife, a daughter from his first

marriage and his elderly father. Maurice is a habitual heavy-drinker, hypochondriac and philanderer who is also being haunted by strange visions that no one else is able to see. When Maurice’s elderly father suddenly dies, the ghostly visions increase and Maurice starts investigating the possibilities that a wielder of dark magic is haunting his establishment.

No one in Maurice’s circle believes there is a ghost and they all attribute his sightings to his drinking, the shock of his father dying, and so forth. When he uncovers an account from 1720 in which a housemaid details her encounter with the 'Underhill' ghost, Maurice becomes ever more determined to prove them all wrong.

The novel also has some fun sexcapades, including Maurice’s ridiculous attempt to get his wife Joyce into a threesome with his best friend’s wife, Diana. Amis’s characters always seem to have plenty of attention from women but they always find a way to mess things up. Amis never really bothers to give his women any depth generally painting them merely as sex objects.

At the same time, an unreliable narrator is something Amis excels at. Maurice isn't a particularly likeable character but he is quite comical in a sozzled Basil Faulty sort of way; you are never certain whether or not he actually sees any apparitions or whether they are simply manifestations of a drink-sodden mind. This a modern Gothic short novel where by today's standards the ghost is quite placid and easily dispensed with but its both comical and exhilarating in parts making it an satisfyingly quick read overall.

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