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My Life Closed Twice
The tone is sharp and contemporary for this novel which through its themes - Oxford, women and literature - explores the writer's own generation.
- GenresFiction
208 pages, Paperback
First published July 4, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 18, 2021
Summary - Kingsley Amis with more sex, and perhaps slightly funnier(?) jokes. A read to pass the time, and then forget.
Reading under-30's authors awarded the Somerset Maugham Award has been patchy so far, with several that have sat squarely in the middle. Williams's first novel (and 1978 winner) occupies the same sort of space as Kingsley Amis's more famous 1955 winner, Lucky Jim. It's always about middle class white Oxbridge men - Martin the fictional protagonist actually makes a joke about this at one point - and the jokes nod a dusty head to the (IMO admittedly very good) Evelyn Waugh.
I did chuckle, and it's a light enough read, easily dispatched in a few hours on a Sunday. However, the novel is about an amateur's bad novel, and it never soars enough to escape the feeling that Williams is trying just a little too hard not to be that guy. Everything is overstated to the nth degree. Martin's wife Ellen gurns around doorframes like Harpo Marx. The frantic dash between car to tube to taxi towards the end shades Basil Fawlty into the Z-Cars that he elsewhere derides. The story takes off enough to get off the ground, but like the schoolkids' kite in the closing scenes, it's touch and go.
Overall, the sort of book that you might pick up at a book-crossing to pass a cross-country train journey. I expect the plot will vanish from my thoughts soon enough, but it has given me two things I want to follow up. Number 1 - get a frisbee; and Number 2 - go to the clifftop Mynack Theatre in Cornwall (assuming it exists, and is still open once we emerge from lockdown!)
Reading under-30's authors awarded the Somerset Maugham Award has been patchy so far, with several that have sat squarely in the middle. Williams's first novel (and 1978 winner) occupies the same sort of space as Kingsley Amis's more famous 1955 winner, Lucky Jim. It's always about middle class white Oxbridge men - Martin the fictional protagonist actually makes a joke about this at one point - and the jokes nod a dusty head to the (IMO admittedly very good) Evelyn Waugh.
I did chuckle, and it's a light enough read, easily dispatched in a few hours on a Sunday. However, the novel is about an amateur's bad novel, and it never soars enough to escape the feeling that Williams is trying just a little too hard not to be that guy. Everything is overstated to the nth degree. Martin's wife Ellen gurns around doorframes like Harpo Marx. The frantic dash between car to tube to taxi towards the end shades Basil Fawlty into the Z-Cars that he elsewhere derides. The story takes off enough to get off the ground, but like the schoolkids' kite in the closing scenes, it's touch and go.
Overall, the sort of book that you might pick up at a book-crossing to pass a cross-country train journey. I expect the plot will vanish from my thoughts soon enough, but it has given me two things I want to follow up. Number 1 - get a frisbee; and Number 2 - go to the clifftop Mynack Theatre in Cornwall (assuming it exists, and is still open once we emerge from lockdown!)
August 2, 2011
Hmmm, a writer writing about a writer - one of those books that's in danger of disappearing up its own backside, but thankfully saved by some excellent sarcastic humour as the narrator becomes increasingly irritated by the rejection letters he receives. Quite liked his 'cackling' wife Ellen, too.
February 8, 2010
To abstract.......and trying to discover what the story was all about.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews