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Lucky Jim Audiobook
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(3.00) - 8,866 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
A hilarious satire about college life and high-class manners, this is a classic of postwar English literature.
Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954.
This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.
More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh.
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"Amis' characters shone brilliantly in this comic tale, although to describe it as comic could do the novel a large disservice as it does contain some emotionally well thought out moments. The characters definitely drive what is a fairly simple plot, even the bit part players such as Michie (Jim's frustratingly keen student) are brilliantly captured. Jim as the protagonist can make you want to tear your hair out as he bounds with hapless abandon into another display of buffoonery, but despite his idiocy you feel a sense of kinship for him as he finds himself at the mercy of the bureaucratic and intensely boring Mr Welch his egotistical son, and the hysterical presence of Margaret Definitely worth a read."
— Springheelednic (4 out of 5 stars)
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“Kingsley Amis’s 1954 book is, despite its unreconstructed attitude toward women, one of the funniest novels ever written…Narrator James Lailey delivers the story with brio, never overplaying the comedy but conveying the mood and mien of the characters as they appear to Jim, foremost among them being the frightful Welch.”
— Washington Post (audio review) -
“Contains some of the finest comic set pieces in the language.”
— The Observer (London) -
“Lucky Jim is as fresh and surprising today as it was in 1954.”
— Washington Post -
“If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”
— Christopher Hitchens, New York Times bestselling author
Awards
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A Washington Post Pick of Summer's Best Audiobooks
Lucky Jim Listener Reviews
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" great "
— dd, 5/15/2016 -
" I can't find enough superlatives for Paul Shelley's reading of the classic. I loved it before, I adore it now I've heard this. Without a doubt one of the very best readings of any book I have listened to. What a terrific actor, with great comic timing. Particularly liked his take on the neurotic Margaret Peel and the abominable Professor Welch. Have this on tape, but would love it on CD "
— GARANCE, 1/8/2016 -
" Liked it - very funny in a grumpy sort of way. "
— Catherine, 2/14/2014 -
" Lucky Jim was so funny! I couldn't believe all the predicaments that he got into. The writing style seemed to match the subject matter--a British university community. Jim Dixon was smart and funny! "
— Kam, 2/11/2014 -
" I've never liked Kingsley Amis, and gave up reading him years ago. "
— Alison, 1/30/2014 -
" Funniest novel ever. "
— Jorn, 1/28/2014 -
" Contains the funniest description of a hangover that I have ever read. "
— Antoine, 1/21/2014 -
" The classic comic novel of a lowly English professor and his not so lucky love life and not so lucky professional life. "
— B, 1/13/2014 -
" It straddled the border (that I never knew existed) between light-heartedness and sarcasm. I recommend it to anyone exasperated with academic life or life in general. Very funny but I wanted more from the conclusion. "
— Heather, 1/12/2014 -
" Funny! Loved it. They said it's in the style of Evelyn Waugh, so now I am reading Waugh's "Decline and Fall." "
— Melissa, 1/4/2014 -
" You must read this book if you can find it. "
— Nattroop, 12/22/2013
About Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) was a popular and prolific British novelist, poet, satirist, and critic. Lucky Jim, his first novel, appeared in 1954 to great acclaim and won a Somerset Maugham Award. Ultimately he published twenty-four novels, including science fiction and a James Bond sequel; more than a dozen collections of poetry, short stories, and literary criticism; restaurant reviews and three books about drinking; political pamphlets and a memoir; and more. He received the Booker Prize for his novel The Old Devils in 1986 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.