Description

Author/Contributor(s):	Amis, Kingsley; Jacobson, Howard
Publisher:	NYRB Classics
Date:	9/17/2013
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

Kingsley Amis, along with being the funniest English writer of hisgeneration was a great chronicler of the fads and absurdities of hisage, and Girl, 20 is a delightfully incisive dissection of theflower-power phase of the 1960s. Amis’s antihero, Sir Roy Vandervane, aconductor and composer who bears more than a passing resemblance toLeonard Bernstein, is a pillar of the establishment whohas fallen hardfor protest, bellbottoms, and the electric guitar. And since vain SirVandervane is a great success, he is also free to pursue his greatestfailing: a taste for younger and younger women. Highborn hippie Sylvia(not, in fact, twenty) is his latest infatuation and a threat to hiswhole family, from his drama-queen wife, Kitty, to Penny, hislong-suffering daughter.

All this is recounted by DouglasYandell, a music critic with his own love problems, who finds that hetoo 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 aslow and dishonest as any other.