Girl, 20

By Kingsley Amis and Howard Jacobson

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

All this is recounted by Douglas Yandell, a music critic with his own love problems, who finds that he too 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 as low and dishonest as any other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781590176900

Kingsley Amis

Born in London in 1922, Kingsley Amis was one of the best-loved British novelists of the twentieth century. He was the author of more than twenty novels, including the classic Lucky Jim, and a number of other works of criticism, poetry, and memoir. He was knighted in 1990, and died in 1995 at the age of seventy-three.

Reviews for Girl, 20

[m_k_m_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

More uncomfortable than it intends to be, at 50 years' distance. But it's a useful cultural artefact in that regard and its satire of countercultural pretensions still works.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

What a difference 17 years makes; from 1954’s ‘Lucky Jim’ to 1971’s ‘Girl, 20’, with Amis going from 32 to 49. The style is still there: eminently British, of course, with dry humor and clever turns of phrase, and with a plot featuring adultery and alcohol, two of his favorite things, but my goodness, how stodgy he seems to have become. The plot to ‘Girl, 20’ is pretty straightforward: a distinguished, well-known, and married musician has had a series of affairs with increasingly younger women, and is now seeing someone who is 17. He has a friend and confidant in a music reviewer who dislikes the girl, but what he really hates is the fact that the musician has taken on a collaborative project fusing classical music with pop, which he doesn’t consider music. It’s through this confidant’s eyes that the novel is narrated, and who Amis channels his satire of the younger generation of the 60’s. Yes, he saves most of his righteous indignation for that, rather than the underage relationship. In addition to the music, he criticizes the anti-war movement, idealism, and the questioning of materialism and established ways of living. He does it in a rather snide way, showing youth of the 60’s as not only misguided and puerile, but mean and violent. He also seems to try to walk a line on race, having his characters express openness to interracial relationships, but others express stereotypes. Amis’s writing is engaging (though sometimes cryptic, as he is fond of subtle references and multiple negatives, among other things), but his plot in this one doesn’t really go anywhere. There were times when I chuckled while I read it, but as I think about it now, there’s just not a lot of joy here, and it’s a letdown compared to ‘Lucky Jim’ and ‘The Green Man’.

[larryking1-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have been reading and hearing the names of the father-son writing duo of Kingsley Amis and Martin Amis for many decades now, and I have even dipped into Martin's oeuvre now and again. (Name Drop Alert: one time I met novelist Margaret Drabble -- her Ice Age was the best book I read in 2019 -- and I mentioned MA's coming to LA in a week and she bristled. Why the dislike? I had to know.) I think I get it now. You see, when Kingsley pere's first novel, Lucky Jim, appeared in 1954, his comic 'tear down the ramparts' approach was part of the Angry Young Men movement of his time, but Amis was anything but angry. He was hilarious and the establishment of that time withered under his caustic onslaughts. Times change. In the space of 17 years and over twenty novels, Amis slowly morphed into a reactionary. What happened? In a word, the 60's. He saw "that for all its high-minded talk [it was] as low and dishonest as any other." He also turned into a curmudgeon, both antiquated and misogynistic. As a music devotee myself, I enjoyed the novel's premise: can the brilliant composer/conductor, sixtyish Sir Roy Vandervane keep both family and career together during his madcap serial pursuits of a younger and younger collective of women, nay, girls? You see, the last one, 17 year old Sylvia (whose father is the editor/boss of our narrator, one Douglas Yandell) is a bull in a China closet. Throughout the story, Douglas is writing away, record reviews of Hayden and Bach boxed sets, concert reviews now and then, a Webern biography, and following his older friends attempt to master Mahler's (aka 'Gus' herein) 8th, all the while courting two wonderful women of his very own. Roy is clearly the younger Yandell's mentor. Quite a literary romp, this one, with a splendid denouement, and leaving me with a craving to revisit Blowup!  

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Roy Vandervane, a competent musician, and a great popular success, strains his family by indulging himself with a love affair with a much younger woman. An example of high ideals and low practices written with great skill. So funny, so tragic!

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to read a novel from the 1960s, or of the 1960s, instead of modern stories set in that decade, and in that sense, I enjoyed Girl, 20. However, I doubt I would read Amis' novel again. I can't put my finger on what was wrong - not the narration, because the acerbic writing is amusing, and not the lack of likeable characters or a happy ending, because I wasn't expecting either, but for a brief book (just over two hundred pages), I spent nearly a week trying to finish the thing.Douglas Yandell (that's Yandell, not Randall), is a music critic whose best friend, the famous composer Sir Roy Vandervane, is going through the mother of all mid-life crises. After a series of affairs with younger women, Sir Roy becomes fixated on the girl of the title (although the obnoxious Sylvia is actually 17) and decides to leave his highly-strung wife, troubled daughter and bratty son for her. Douglas is caught in the middle, trying to be a friend to both Roy and Kitty Vandervane, while lusting after daughter Penny and sharing part-time girlfriend Vivienne with another man. All very permissive, wryly humorous and dated, interspersed with middle-class culture. Perhaps that's why I struggled with Kingsley Amis - he's merely a coarser version of Barbara Pym, and I can't stand her books either.I did enjoy the narration, if not the narrator, and actually quite agreed with a lot of Amis' criticism of 1960s liberal culture (especially children left to run wild, and 'youth' conforming to non-conformity), but a lot of the social, political and musical references left me behind. Roy disgusted me, no doubt intentionally, Penny and Sylvia made me wonder what Roy and Douglas could find attractive in them, and I would personally have liked to reach into the novel, drag Ashley out by his ear and beat him (and all spoiled children) with a cricket bat, but Douglas was entertaining at least.Interesting, amusing, but far from endearing. I think I'll try Georgy Girl next, for the female 1960s perspective!