One Fat Englishman

Roger Micheldene, an English publisher, is on the loose in the US. He spends an October week shuttling between New York and Budweiser College in Pennsylvania. This exercises all his British appetites … snobbery, gluttony, anger, sloth, and lust.

But Amis roasts Americans as well and serves us familiar dishes, though in a piquant sauce: the precocious undergraduate author of a far-out novel, an earnest young priest, and an alcoholic literary agent’s nymphomaniacal wife.

©1963 Kingsley Amis. Introduction © 2011 by David Lodge (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Very Nasty Englishman

The author is a great storyteller. However, Roger is such a horrible individual, that it is difficult to care what happens to him. He makes me feel saintly by comparison. Enjoyed satirical bits on the Church and academia and the ending was funny, but the overall effect is dark and disgusting. Make me wonder about myself for enjoying the book.

I laughed more than once.

I found the prose sneering, funny, poetic, and interesting. Not politically correct. Not to everyone's tastes. I laughed throughout. Glad to see a few more Kingsley Amis novels are being released by audible.