Lucky Jim

Penguin Modern Classics

By: Kingsley Amis

Narrated by: James Lailey

Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons. As long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie England' and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand.

©1953 Kingsley Amis (P)2020 Penguin Audio

An excellent title, greatly produced

I love the book and return to it from time to time, rereading it completely and having great fun on each occasion. This must have been the third or fourth time I've read the book but a first in the audio format. I can only say that it has been put together splendidly and the text and narrator had me grinning and chuckling throughout. A lovely read and a lovely listen.

Extraordinary

The novel is even better than I remember from reading it once or twice about 50 years ago.
Not just comical, but surprisingly humane and delicate in places. The reader’s performance is astonishingly good, characterising the different voices to perfection, while also incorporating the stage directions that Kingsley Amis drops in after many snatches of dialogue. These awkward indications, e.g. “with a laugh”, are hard to do without overdoing them, but James Lailey gets them exactly right. Chapeau!

How I envy him

Any book that includes the descriptive simile "... like a left-arm bowler emerging from behind the umpire" automatically qualifies for five stars no matter the rest of the content (too many of them have gotten me out, those mutants are a curse on cricket). But the rest of the book lives hugely up to this highlight. Professor Welch anticipates every "bad boss" of modern TV series by 50 years, and Margaret the serial manipulator would have the moderns frothing at the mouth. The set pieces such as Jim's hangover scene and his drunken public lecture are quite rightly landmarks in comic literature, and how about the smoking!! Those innocent little sticks leaven and punctuate every scene from cover to cover. I would perhaps tackle more Amis after this but I just don't see how he could have topped it. James Lailey's narration is an integral part of the fun, he somehow perfectly conveys the tobacco-saturated atmosphere of the postwar common room.

Funny it ain't

Said to be hilarious. It isn't. It's a plodder with a simple, tedious plot. Listed amongst the funniest books in the history of literature. A few wry situations is as good as it gets. Accent for protagonist is unattractive.