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The Old Devils

3.3 of 5 stars 3.30 · rating details · 985 ratings · 74 reviews

Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when professional Welshman, Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon, join them.

Paperback, Vintage Classics, 384 pages

Published January 15th 2004 by Random House (first published 1986)

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Jan 06, 2013 William rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20-ce, fiction, uk

This novel is a story of old friends, married couples in southwestern Wales, and how their lives change when Alun and Rhiannon Weaver return to the country after Alun's long career in London. Alun has for sometime been an ambitious media personality whose career resulted in the "popularization" of Wales. He is vaguely blamed for the onslaught of developers and bad architecture in the country, though this seems to me baseless. He's also known for championing the Welsh poet, Brydan, whom I suspect...more This novel is a story of old friends, married couples in southwestern Wales, and how their lives change when Alun and Rhiannon Weaver return to the country after Alun's long career in London. Alun has for sometime been an ambitious media personality whose career resulted in the "popularization" of Wales. He is vaguely blamed for the onslaught of developers and bad architecture in the country, though this seems to me baseless. He's also known for championing the Welsh poet, Brydan, whom I suspect is loosely based on Dylan Thomas. Alun's as pure a "shit" as you're likely to come across in English letters. A vile bastard masquerading as a chum. At once upon his return he commences to systematically cuckold most of his friends, whom he then routinely meets the next day at the Bible and Crown for round after round of powerful cirrhotic drinks. Everyone, or almost everyone, in The Old Devils drinks themselves into near insensibility on a daily basis. For what else is there to do in culturally bereft Wales? Peter Thomas was a local college professor in the old days. Back then he seduced and knocked up his student, Rhiannon, still something of a beauty today, whom he promptly left for one Angharad, under the delusion of greener pastures. He's an old fool but at least, unlike Alun, he knows he's an old fool. Peter is now married to the imperious Muriel. He's fat, pushing 70, with a failing heart, and regrets his hasty youthful choices. In other words, he's still in love with Rhiannon. Then there's Charlie, the book's purest alcoholic, who's been suffering lately from panic attacks, and his wife Sophie, the first old flame to succumb to slick Alun's inexplicable charms. There's also Malcolm Cellan-Davies, more of a Welsh scholar than Alun will ever be, and his wife Gwen, who also falls under Alun's spell. Structurally The Old Devils is a traditional novel; there is nothing new or even innovative about it. There are no sophomoric metafictional tricks, for which I was grateful. The novel beguiles us chiefly through its mastery of technique. It is so sure footed. It makes a virtue of the run on sentence. I was surprising to find amid the rich comedic scenes these stretches of striking descriptive beauty. Amis got the Booker for this novel and one can see why. Here is everything he knows from the writing of, what, twenty novels? Here it is all in one book. The last third I found moving; a surprise since emotion is not something Kingsley Amis's work is known for. He's essentially a comic novelist, like his son. That was another striking thing, the similarity of phrasing between father and son. One can almost imagine them talking about the merits of a proper sentence during their famous weekly meetings (see MA's Experience), Highly amusing, highly recommended.(less)

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Dec 15, 2012 Alan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone intrigued by the underlying savagery of British comedy

Recommended to Alan by: Previous work

Kingsley Amis was rather an old devil himself when he wrote this novel, and every bitter, precise word shows how accustomed he'd already become to the aches and indignities of senescence:

Standing quite motionless he gazed before him with a faraway look that a passer-by, especially a Welsh passer-by, might have taken for one of moral if not spiritual insight, such that he might instantly renounce whatever course of action he had laid down for himself. After a moment, something like a harsh bark b

...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Janis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Having never read Kingsley or Martin Amis, I had been curious. Late last year PB mentioned that she had read a Kingsley, and so when I saw the mint condition hardback of The Old Devils at the Brattle, and noticed it had been a Booker Prize winner in 1986, I did not resist.

Kingsley is a fine and fluid writer. The book is almost entirely made up of dialogue, clever and complicated dialogue. The story takes place in Wales, is a commentary on the landscape of Wales, how the Welsh view themselves, vi...more

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Mar 17, 2010 Florence Penrice rated it 4 of 5 stars

What’s not to enjoy in a book that contains the sentence ‘She was said to have been found once telling the man who was laying the carpets about eohippus’ (referring to an unstoppably talkative character)? If that doesn’t make you smile, don’t bother with this book. If it does, find a copy and enjoy.

Kingsley Amis’ writing (at this, later, stage) combined humour and an acute sensibility to the joys and disappointments of life. He is unequalled in his ability to deliniate bores (the unstoppable Dor...more

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Oct 23, 2009 F.R. rated it 3 of 5 stars

I met a lady recently who told me her intention to read every Booker Prize winner. My response was that it’s an admirable ambition, but I’m not sure they’re actually of a uniformly standard. At that point I hadn’t read this book, by a writer I generally like, but if I had then I could have used it as an example. “So-so” is the description I’d go for.

‘The Old Devils’ follows some Welsh couples of a certain age as they drink, copulate and ruminate on the nature of being Welsh. There are some good...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Calvertjones rated it 1 of 5 stars

As a major fan of "Lucky Jim," I was very eager to read another novel by Kingsley Amis. I am sad to report, however, that this is a very far cry away from the unrelenting brilliance and wit of that famous parody of academia, though it apparently won a Booker Prize. First, the plot is dull; you certainly don't have the mounting stakes from "Lucky Jim," when you were constantly wondering when the main character, the bitter, hilariously inebriated professor, would be found out. It concerns some old...more As a major fan of "Lucky Jim," I was very eager to read another novel by Kingsley Amis. I am sad to report, however, that this is a very far cry away from the unrelenting brilliance and wit of that famous parody of academia, though it apparently won a Booker Prize. First, the plot is dull; you certainly don't have the mounting stakes from "Lucky Jim," when you were constantly wondering when the main character, the bitter, hilariously inebriated professor, would be found out. It concerns some old friends from college and earlier, mostly from Wales, who are now elderly and meeting one another again after many years. Rhiannon, one such friend, married a man named Alun, who has made a name for himself in London as a "professional Welshman," going on TV and writing poems on what it's like to be a Welshman. (This part of the plot actually could have been very funny--making fun of identity politics and the search for authenticity.) Alun, though, is considered something of a phony by actual Welshmen living in Wales. He and Rhiannon end up going back to Wales, in the first couple of chapters, and the rest of the book concerns their interactions with the old friends they encounter once again when they do.

In addition to a dull plot, you just don't have the funny dialogue, witty characterizations, satirical situations, even the slapstick and physical humor from Lucky Jim. Every now and then there is a glimpse of this, as in the first chapter, probably the best one in the novel. But overall the dullness of the plot is matched by the dullness of the writing style. Almost no characters are redeemable, which may or may not bother you. I like to have someone to "root for," even if it's in a weird sort of way, such as the serial killer on Dexter. The characters here are either too dull or too annoying to root for. Kingsley Amis was a famous misanthrope, and that comes through here, but it doesn't translate into good fiction here, let alone wit, as it did so wonderfully with Lucky Jim. Too bad. (less)

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Jan 28, 2013 Nicholas During rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found it hard to make a judgement on this book. On one hand it's so misanthropic that it can be very difficult to read. On the other, what's wrong with a book were all the characters are horrible? One might say there are plenty of books out there were awful people as the protagonists, but not many of them are as bad as these old devils. And not many of them have Amis's wit in ripping them to shreds in front of your eyes. Which is basically what happens here, were everyone turns out to be eithe...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Patrick McCoy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

The Old Devils (1986) by Kingsley Amis was a Booker Prize winner for that year. I had previously only read the brilliant Lucky Jim, but always wanted to read more since I was big fan of his son Martin Amis' writing. Martin wrote appealing about his father's novels in his autobiography Experience, and The Old Devils was one of the novels he singled out as being a good read. I feel as though I am missing out on some of the fun since I am not British and I can't see what all the fuss about being We...more

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Mar 29, 2013 John rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Russian Girl was highly impressive and induced me to read more by Amis. This one won an award, so it seemed to be a good choice. Of course the problem may lie with me instead of the book. There were too many main characters, and it was difficult to keep them separate in my mind while reading. With so many main characters, the development was a bit lacking. This might have been better as two or three novels, each concentrating on one couple. Another problem was the English slang and expressio...more

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Aug 16, 2009 Palmyrah rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Readers of John Updike's Couples will find the setup of this novel glancingly familiar: the circle of ingrown, septic-turning friendships among well-off married couples in a small town by the sea, the arrival of the 'new couple' that puts the cat among the pigeons. But where Updike's novel (much the superior of the two) is all about sex and love, Amis's themes are booze and adultery. His couples, unlike Updike's, are all well on the wrong side of middle age; his setting, unlike Updike's pictures...more

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Feb 26, 2012 Courtney H. rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookers

This is the most boring Booker I've read so far. It may, in fact, be one of the most boring books I've ever read. I can't even bother to put it on my list of most hated because at least with, say, Atonement, McEwan had the decency to write a thoroughly despicable, self-absorbed horrorshow of a human being to act as narrator for that otherwise dull book. Amis didn't even give us that. I couldn't even get too upset with him for writing two-dimensional female characters because his male characters...more This is the most boring Booker I've read so far. It may, in fact, be one of the most boring books I've ever read. I can't even bother to put it on my list of most hated because at least with, say, Atonement, McEwan had the decency to write a thoroughly despicable, self-absorbed horrorshow of a human being to act as narrator for that otherwise dull book. Amis didn't even give us that. I couldn't even get too upset with him for writing two-dimensional female characters because his male characters were not much better. Here, none of the characters sparkled, I was 200 pages in before I came to a laugh-aloud line, and the most poignant part of the book didn't register at all. The characters are all stuck in high school dramas. Seriously, those were dull when we were IN high school, and everyone I know cringes when thinking back about that grating nonsense when they are a couple of years out. So the idea of 70-year-olds never outgrowing them is both boring and depressing, and it fails to ring true. The Finkler Question, which I think most people really disliked, was MUCH better at knocking humorously at the door of aging and regret, and Staying On (which won in the 70s) did it extremely well at that, too.
And if we are supposed to see the problems as deeper than that, then all the worse, because I was so disinterested in the characters that I actually couldn't believe them capable of that kind of depth. Say what you will about the foibles of the Finkler Question, I could buy into the main character's neurosis and weirdness. I felt none of that here.
And if it is supposed to be about Wales, the culture (real and imagined), and the culture-mongers, then it failed there, too. There's this bit at the end, where one of the characters gets dressed down for writing a pompous little bit of novel that purports to, but fails, to capture Wales. Think it was an inside apology to us as readers?
I have never been so glad to finish a book as I was to finish this one. I wasn't even this excited when I finished Atonement or Prep. And that's saying something.
(less)

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Nov 28, 2012 Elizabeth L. is currently reading it

I bought this to reward myself for a deadline, but dug into it over Thanksgiving with the deadline still VERY much un-met. It felt deliciously meanspirited and Amisesque at first (especially when read with a giant mug of tea in a very drafty house) but has recently soured - more like gone off - a bit like a g&t made with the "slimline tonic" one of the protagonists favors as a diet aid. Even with Amis's misogyny as a given, the women are absolute cardboard - and the men unlovable. I haven't...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Ka rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

Kingsley Amis writes of a loose group of elderly Welsh couples who socialize frequently and have known each other throughout their lives. Their days are lubricated with astonishing amounts of drinking, so much it hardly seems possible, but Amis was himself known to hold prodigious quantities. The chapters rotate among several of the old devils, with a darky satiric accounting of their relations, marital, extra-marital, familial, and frenemy. They frequently gather at the Bible, which turns out t...more

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Aug 25, 2010 Ania rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked this.I liked this?I'm returning to Amis after reading Lucky Jim a long time ago at school and obviously being bypassed by its nuances. This time Amis senior seemed paunchy and greasy and thickened. I guess the book was written at that time in his life. I have no concept of 'welshness' either. But i could sense infusions of his personal life throughout-the drinking, the cheating. Well, that's a comfort to me anyway. Will be taking another break from him now, perhaps some poetry. The dynas...more

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Jan 17, 2009 Ann rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is one of those unfortunate circumstances where I feel like I “got” whatever there was to get out of this book – the sarcasm bit, the dry wit chafed, and I was duly poigned by what poignancy there was - but was left mostly unmoved. Since I'm probably not the optimal reader for a novel about aging and the aged in rural Wales, I trust that more seasoned observers of Britons and Walians will go ahead and ignore my unappreciativeness.

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Aug 20, 2009 Bette rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british

I tend to be sympathetic to characters who are aging, fat, and unlovely, since I'm sure this is my destiny as well, but this bunch is so tedious that I couldn't muster any interest. I kept waiting for the humor to begin, but it never did. They're all just moldering away in Wales, pickling their livers and feeling sorry for themselves. I feel like David Lodge has written these characters, and written them far better. I'm astounded this won the Booker.

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Dec 07, 2011 will rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As in "Lucky Jim," I was worried that I would not like this book until I got to the last few chapters. Amis is, seemingly, a master of the slow, almost unbearable set-up, but he rewards the reader just as well. As the novel is primarily about retired people, I suspect it would ruminate better with people approaching that age, but it still has a lot for readers of any age and station. The book, overall, is an exercise in considering perspective: what is one's perspective? is there such a thing as...more

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Nov 16, 2009 Katy rated it 5 of 5 stars

My mother-in-law recommended this book, and it was absolutely fantastic. It ranks right up there with the Bone People as one of my favorite books. It is about a group of old people that really carry on. It was really very funny and quite light of a book. I read it while in the hospital recovering from having Emily (she was in special care, it was a really grim time, and the book was an absolute life-saver).

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Aug 04, 2011 Alex Sarll added it

For the first hundred pages or so, this (my first Kingsley Amis novel) was all perfectly competent and moderately amusing, but I couldn't exactly see the point of it - par for the course with Booker winners. Then suddenly (and yet I couldn't pinpoint exactly where) I realised how wise and sad and true it was about time, and people, and the stupid bloody things we do to each other and can sometimes make right.

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Oct 05, 2010 Jilly rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love Kingsley Amis - even when a huge portion of enjoying the book is dependent on a minimum understanding of Wales and Welsh culture which I entirely lack, I STILL love Kingsley Amis.

Clever, poignant, and incredibly easy to read. Quite a feat, given a cast of characters all past-60 and a setting I definitively didn't quite "get."

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Sep 26, 2011 Amos Kovacs rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 28, 2012 Stephanie rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book seemed to mostly consist of a gaggle of retirees getting drunk all the time, with a few of them pursuing adulterous trysts here and there. Oh and remarking repeatedly how Welsh it all is. If that sounds spellbinding to you, you must read this book. Otherwise, I'd give it a miss.

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Jan 07, 2013 Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I don't have a full enough understanding of the Welsh-British relationship to appreciate most of the subtleties here--I was watching passages fly right over my head. But the best scenes here have to be some of the funniest bits of humor ever written.

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Jul 02, 2011 Serjeant Wildgoose rated it 1 of 5 stars

1986 must have been a lean year if this won the Booker!

It takes some doing to bore me in the first half-dozen pages, but this book did it. It is poorly written and revolves around a cast of utterly feckless and uninteresting soaks.

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Sep 27, 2010 Rehavet rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: roman

This book must be sold with a "drink responsibly" or better, "quantity of alcoholic beverages consumed in this book are fictitious and has nothing to do with the reality" warning on it is cover. A disappointment for me after the sheer brilliance of "Lucky Jim".

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Apr 05, 2013 Lawrence rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The hangover, marathon drinking descriptions are so horrifying they made me never want to drink again...in so many ways depressing, but then I found myself being strangely envious of the characters with all that time to spend....it even starting being funny at some point...I've found myself thinking about this book long after I finished....

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May 09, 2011 Lizzie Blueyondercouk rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read the book through, found it a little hard going at times, perhaps i am not quite old enough to relate to it, but my father loved this book, i may read it again in 10 years.

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Feb 03, 2011 Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Sad and very funny, it's the perfect book to read on the underground if you want to appear a lunatic. Buy it used--for some reason, the thing can be had for next to nothing.

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Sep 20, 2008 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book. It was funny. But. 1) I had problems keeping track of the characters, at least for the first hundred pages or so, who was married to whom, which one was overweight, which one a shrew, which one(s) were alcoholics. 2) I am a little uncomfortable reading about destructive alcoholism. It wasn’t too bad here, but I winced every single time one of them got behind the wheel. 3) I am not Welsh and I feel that if I were, living twenty years ago, I would have gotten a lot more out of t...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wish I knew more about Welsh identity politics in the early '80s. I'd love to know how much of Amis' satire about the (imposed?) revival of Welsh culture is good-natured lampooning and how much is driven by the political views he expressed later in life.

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About Kingsley Amis

Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than twenty novels, three collections of poetry, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered the English novelist Martin Amis.

Kingsley Amis was born in Clapham, Wandsworth, Couty of London (now South London), England, the son of William Robert Am...more

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