The Green Man

by Kingsley Amis

Amis's comic horror tale concerns an English pub (The Green Man) haunted by a 17th-century parson who practices Satanism and visits all manner of abominations on the living. Maurice Allington, the owner and narrator, is a genial scoundrel who must exorcise the premises before all of his trade is scared or killed off.

Available editions of The Green Man

	9780897332200, Paperback, Academy Chicago Pub, 1991 $24.50 (Very Good) Other copies of 9780897332200

	9780224617406, Book, Cape, 1969 £3.68 () Other copies of 9780224617406

	9780151370405, Book, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970 $3.11 (Used - Acceptable) Other copies of 9780151370405

	9781405694636, Digital, BBC WW, None currently available

Publisher Notes

This is a unique novel in the author's canon: while it deals with a number of matters such as sex, mortality and faith, the supernatural dominates this brilliant and hypnotic work. Maurice Allington, dissipated, cultivated, paradoxically engaging, is the modern landlord of a medieval coaching inn, The Green Man. As an old inn should, it has a persistent, long-quiescent ghost: Dr Thomas Underhill, a 17th-century practitioner of the black arts and a sexual deviant suspected of two hideous murders. Allington becomes the sole witness to the reappearance of Underhill in the hot summer of 1968, during which he has more mundane distractions: major staff crises, a withdrawn adolescent daughter, middle-aged hypochondria aggravated by twenty years of aggressive drinking, and a compulsion to arrange a romp with himself, his wife and his mistress. Finally, Allington is driven by a series of unpleasant incidents to bring about a climactic confrontation with the supernatural visitant. A cunning blend of terror, suspense, and humor, The Green Man is superb entertainment and a masterly example of the literature of the macabre.

Media Reviews

"A splendid chiller, in the uncomplicated, old-fashioned sense....The dialogue is filled with humor and a chilling strangeness. Indeed, the success of this short novel depends very much upon the balance that Amis maintains between laughter and fear."

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