Summary
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.
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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."
-- New York Times Book Review
"Frequently funny, tedious when the dialogue turns weighty, determinedly suave, and a shade too nimble in the plot." -- Jonathan Yardley
-- New Republic
"The whole thing is hugely enjoyable, but I couldn't say my flesh crept at any point....Laughs abound; as do the less admirable Amisite traits of laborious construction and ramming home points in self-explanatory dialogue."
-- New Statesman
"If this new novel is a trifle contrived and definitely weak in its plot, it is as brilliant as ever as a comedy of manners and character." -- Guy Davenport
-- National Review
Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Academy Chicago Pub
Published date: 1991
Size: 4 x 7 inches
Weight: 0.3 pounds
Publisher's 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of Underhill in the hot summer of 1968, during which he has more mundane distractions: major staff crises, a withdrawn adolescent daughter, middle-aged hypochondria aggravated by twenty years of aggressive drinking, and a compulsion to arrange a romp with himself, his wife and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.
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