The Old Devils

The Old Devils

Kingsley Amis

The Old Devils won the Booker Prize. A pub gathering of elderly married couples devolves into booze-inflected reminiscing—and complaining—in this "sharp and funny" English comedy about marriage, aging, and friendship. Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis's The Old Devils, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when "all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast"—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon. Long-dormant rivalries and romances are rudely awakened, as life at the Bible and Crown, the local pub, is changed irrevocably. The Old Devils confronts the attrition of ageing with rare candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence.