Although I'm a great admirer of Amis fils, this my first exposure to Amis pere left me cold. This was a dull plod to read. Too much alcohol, too many loathsome characters, too much pointlessness to their lives. Had they no redeeming features? Did any of them ever commit one act of altruism or show a tad of empathy. Good job their lungs will blacken and their livers fail, I say. ( )

Senior citizen sex! Have I gotten your attention? Wisely the author did not dscribe the sex in any detail - visualization is left to the reader. But there is plenty of it here. Four or five couples (there are a lot of characters) that have known each other for decades have their lives disrupted when one old couple returns to their hometown. It’s like the TV show “Friends” for seniors - they have all slept with each other.

They also do an incredible amount of drinking and smoking, pub crawling all over a fictional Wales. That is part of the theme of the book, searching for the old Wales and the real Welchman. There is a fictional poet that serves as the symbol of that search. Celebrated as a great Welch poet, he didn’t even speak Welch.

It’s a good read, full of wry British humor. ( )

There isn't enough space here to tell you how much I disliked this book. It was my first Kingsley Amis, and will be my last (for a while, at least). The story involves a celebrated writer returning to his native south Wales, reigniting old friendships and opening old wounds of sexual and professional jealousy. The protagonists are all ageing, and are forced to confront issues that arose between them in the twenties now they are approaching their 60s and beyond.
I found everyone (literally everyone) in the book thoroughly dilsikable. They were a bunch of racist, mysoginistic, xenophobic, homophobic, right-wing old men and women who had little or no redeeming features. I actually occassionally enjoy reading about characters I dislike, but their stories bored me and their personalities and lifestyles repelled me. There wasn't, for me, enough satire or irony in Amis' writing to make me think that he was anything other than fully on their sides, making this a fairly repugnant read.

Good if you like Welsh windbags. Great TV adaptation that I've never seen repeated ( )

Probably Amis' second best book, after "Luck Jim" and ahead of "Take A Girl Like You". A man, famous for being a Welsh celebrity in England, returns to Wales in retirement and confronts old devils in the flesh and of his own making. ( )