If you started reading Kingsley Amis's novels in order you could follow changing sexual mores in Britain.
In 1954 he published Lucky Jim. There men call each other by their surnames and young women on first introduction are Miss. Sexual contact between the hero and heroine is limited to a little kissing. In 1955 (That Uncertain Feeling) there is a quick and regretted bout of adultery. In 1958 (I Like it Here) marital sex is happy and adultery considered but not embarked on. In 1962, (Take a Girl Like You), the main theme is pre-marital sex, as it came to be called, ending with the drunken semi-rape of the virgin heroine by the hero (who gets it away with a couple of other young women). There's also a visit to a strip club and a bit of attempted lesbianism. In 1963 (One Fat Englishman) the heroine is in an open marriage and the hero trying anything that comes his way. By 1969 (I Want it Now) the heroine is promiscuous if frigid and the hero a successful rake. So by 1971 and Girl, 20, there is easy adultery from one of the two main guys in it, easy sexiness from the three young women and oral sex. "Well times changed. You could say that for them." (I Want it Now).
The narrator of Girl, 20, Douglas, is a classical music critic. He is a friend of the trendy lefty conductor and violinist Sir Roy Vandervane. Sir Roy is fifty three and loves hanging out with Youth, especially in the form of girls, and this time his girl is the scruffy nihilist Sylvia. Sir Roy (in Douglas's eyes) betrays music by composing a piece for him and a lousy rock band (called Pigs Out). Some thugs thump him and break his Stradivarius. Sir Roy supports the progressive causes of the day but is an irresponsible father and his children all go off the rails. The last scene is of the family dog having been crippled by a kick from Sir Roy's monstrous youngest son and his daughter starting to take heroin.
Anyway there are some typical Amis ingredients In Girl, 20:-
· The main character is an adulterous shit;
· The Amis female is there in the person of Douglas's girlfriend Vivienne, who is shrewd though not clever, sexy, honest and very good-looking;
· Some great comic scenes eg Roy pretending that someone wearing sunglasses must be blind and so forces them to accept his help across the road; Vivienne's father Mr Copes, on meeting Douglas trapping him into saying he is not sleeping with his daughter, leading him through questions and answers until Mr Copes says:- "You know, Mr Yandell, I may be very old-fashioned but I can't help feeling that, as a companion for a healthy, vigorous girl like Vivvy, an apparently equally health and vigorous young man who can totally suppress his physical desires over a period of about four months, uh, leaves something to be desired."
· Observations of speech - eg the new vowel sound "uh" to replace the short "a" in words like "flat."
· Weak points in the plot. Amis is not good on making action convincing. Eg he wants the narrator Douglas to observe Roy confronted by Sylvia's father, who is also Douglas's boss. "One more mini-mystery seemed cleared up: I had been included in the Retrenchment Club lunch-party but by design so that I might witness my friend's discomfiture." No, Douglas was included as he is the narrator and you had to have him there, so you cobbled together a bit of leaky motivation for it.
I thought on glancing through Girl, 20 again that there would be more of a period feel to it. Russian communism, which was regarded leniently by the progressives of the time has gone, girls Sylvia's age would not be listening to Led Zeppelin and there would be more drugs but it doesn't seem to come from another world. It has a grand theme, and that is the death of a civilisation, with the last chapter set in Sir Roy's house, empty except for his daughter looking forward to dying and Douglas full of a sense of "something major, something irretrievable" having happened to his life and concerns.
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