The Green Man (Kingsley Amis novel)
| The Green Man | |
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| Directed by | Elijah Moshinsky |
| Written by |
Book author: Kingsley Amis Screenwriter: Malcolm Bradbury |
| Starring |
Albert Finney Nicky Henson Josie Lawrence Michael Culver |
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Release date
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Running time
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150 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
The Green Man () is a 1969 novel by British author Kingsley Amis. A Times Literary Supplement reviewer described The Green Man as "three genres of novel in one": ghost story, moral fable, and comic novel. The novel reflects Amis's willingness to experiment with genre novels (e.g., The Alteration (science fiction/alternate history), or Colonel Sun: a James Bond Adventure) while displaying many of the characteristics of his conventional novels, both in superficial aspects such as fogeyishness and problems with alcohol, and in more substantive aspects such as a self-reflective observation of human cruelty and selfishness in everyday relations.
The novel is set in and around The Green Man, an inn between London and Cambridge owned by Maurice Allington, a 53-year-old man with a second wife, a teenage daughter and an 80-year-old father living with him in the inn's upstairs apartment. The inn and its name date back to the 14th century, and the inn's charm is further embellished by a history of haunting related to a 17th-century owner, Thomas Underhill, a Cambridge scholar who dabbled in the occult. Underhill was associated with two unsolved murders, including that of his wife, which could not be traced back to him.
As the novel unfolds, Allington is beset by a number of difficulties, including his father's death by stroke at dinner one night, and a drinking problem that causes hypnagogic jactitation and hallucinations; Maurice compounds his problems by pursuing an affair with his doctor's wife, neglecting his daughter Amy (whose mother, Maurice's first wife, was killed in a road accident), and attempting to seduce both his current wife and his mistress into a ménage à trois, which backfires when the two women take an enthusiastic interest in each other and effectively shut him out of the orgy.
During this time Maurice begins to see ghosts around the inn – a red-haired woman, presumably Underhill's wife, in the hallway, a small bird floating above his bathtub, the spectre of Thomas Underhill himself in the dining room – and yet has a difficult time communicating this to his family and friends, who assume that heavy drinking and the stress of his father's death are causing him to hallucinate. Maurice's own investigations take him to All Saints' College, a fictional Cambridge college (modeled on All Souls' of Oxford) of which Underhill was a fellow, and at which his papers are secreted. There he sees Underhill's own record of having used his black arts to entice and then ravish young girls from the village.
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