The Old Devils (New York Review Books Classics)

ISBN: 159017576X

Author: Amis, Kingsley

Condition: Used

BOOKER PRIZE WINNERA pub gathering of elderly married couples devolves into booze-inflected reminiscing-and complaining-in this sharp and funny English comedy about marriage, aging, and friendship (The Washington Post).Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amiss 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 Amiss greatest achievement-a book that stands comparison with any English novel of the [twentieth] century-The Old Devils confronts the attrition of ageing with rare candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence.