Recently Released
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Recently Caught
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Social Links
Bookish Quotes
"When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does."
Lucky Jim
|
Lucky Jim
Buy from one of these Booksellers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
1 journaler for this copy...
|
I had to read this book for a third year university course ("The Modern British Novel"). I remember it as the most hilarious book. One of these days, when I need a good laugh, I plan to re-read it. Lucky Jim won the Somerset Maugham Award (for best work of fiction by a British author under the age of 35) in 1955. (Left: Edward Gorey illustration on the cover of the 1954 first edition.) |
|
|
|
|
I picked Lucky Jim off the shelf having just finished Anthony Powell's excellent twelve-volume Dance to the Music of Time series, which was written during approximately the same period. (A Question of Upbringing, the first volume in Powell's series, was published in 1951 and Lucky Jim -- Amis' first novel -- was published in 1954.) Lucky Jim was just as good the second time, in fact probably better, this reader having spent the last twenty plus years steeped in the kind of professional exasperation Amis describes so well. I also found the novel more multi-dimensional this time around -- not just funny, but poignant (thinking particularly of the relationship muddles with which Jim and Christine struggle, and Jim's frighteningly codependent association with Margaret). Amis' legendary misogyny is present throughout the text, but in a less hateful form than it subsequently took, and is perhaps more forgiveable given the decade in which Jim was written. A few links:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
