Despite the ire displayed here by some silly ideologues, this is really a first-rate novel by the inimitable Kingsley Amis. He creates a character with an authentic voice, a character that is both comically befuddled and ultimately depressingly confused. But always likeable, likeable because he is true and concerned. His portrait of his ex-wife and his present wife are biting, although at the beginning he is certainly taken with and devoted to that present wife. But the male characters don't rea...

This is an impeccable novel....Some would believe that getting intensely angry at the perceived slight to one's gender's honor due to the female protagonists in the book being portrayed as neurotic and selfish, is behavior that only helps prove that all women ever are kind, rational, and mentally balanced, and that it is therefore the duty of all novelists to portray their female characters in this way, and if they don't--they have failed as novelists and human beings.Perhaps an analogy would he...

This book made me so angry I ripped it up directly after finishing it. It's the worst piece of misogynistic garbage I have ever read and nothing can induce me to read another book by Kingsley Amis. I didn't believe, then, in not finishing a book no matter how much it disgusted me but now I have decided life is too short and there are too many good, worthy books out there to read.

I don’t have a lot of truck with authorial intention. Many of the writers I read died decades or even centuries ago. I lack the time or inclination to research their personal lives. What they wrote has to speak to me; that’s the necessary and sufficient condition.That said, I looked into the contemporary reactions to Stanley and the Women because I vaguely remember it creating a bit of a kerfuffle at the time. It seems that opinion was divided as to how Amis intended us to take the book. Marilyn...

While I have struggled myself to overcome the tendencey, I have nothing against the detached,ironic point of view.Sometimes the tone is just right for the material,but too often it is not an entirely satisfactory outlet of expression, affirming supercilliousness and a narrow,rigid style of observation that can seem cruel in its utter indifference to the emotional range of most lives.Used without sensitivity,instead of scathing social commentary we get value judgements and cheap wit that does not...

Sad, but humorous in many places and insightful about women, who should not read this book. It should be remembered that it is written in the first person, which means that what the main character is saying and thinking is just that - the character, and not necessarily the author. Some reviewers have apparently missed that point.Stanley Duke, a middle-aged Londoner, had a son, Steven, who developed schizophrenia. This forced him, against his preference, to spend more time with his ex-wife, a wom...

Stanley and the Women by Kingsley Amis10 out of 10From a certain point on, it may not matter what others say about a Magnum opus you like, indeed, even if they consider it in fact a ‘mean little novel in every sense, sour, spare, and viciously well-organized’, as the son of the genius, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, who might well be the inspiration for Steve Duke, has said about this novel, making this reader further inclined to delay the reading of The Information or another of the books he has w...

This is Amis's view of how a man from South London lives inthe 80's London, emphasizing his relationships with variouswomen: his current wife, his ex-wife, a doctor in charge oftreating his son for madness, etc. Since Amis was himself fromSouth London, one may wonder if this is auto-biographical.In any event, Amis is writing about a world he knew well and writing very well indeed. None of the women is perfect,but the same can be said of the men. The story does notresolve all of the complications...

For such a depressing topic there sure are plenty of very funny moments and lines. The party on the barge is quite funny. Then there's this bit, as an example, when Stanley is going to visit his son in the mental hospital, for your enjoyment:...I turned the corner to find that an ambulance had drawn up outside the entrance and the two crewmen were helping down an old fellow who going on like a madman in a Bela Lugosi movie. Shock-headed, wild-eyed, wrapped in a grey blanket, he was spreading his...

hilarious. misogynistic. fab.

My nineteenth Amis book, and the first one that I've considered calling "misogynist." The final pages are truly offensive, and every woman save one comes off as absolutely unbalanced.

What a piece of garbage. As misogynistic as Portnoy's Complaint, (the last woman-hating book I read) but without the fun writing and zaniness.

Another brilliant book by Amis. It's remarkable that his books are so incredibly hilarious but underneath it all is a real sadness or melancholy.

This is a deeply funny book provided that you don't take the misogyny at face value. Most of the male characters are pretty unsympathetic as well.

"'They say people go on getting married to the same person time after time,' I said. 'Well men certainly do. There isn't another other sex.'"

This winds up as the common male answer to feminism, pre-Venus/Mars. The style feels dated, but it is Amis, and therefore worth of reading.

I reread this novel about every decade, hoping to find out more about the characters - but failing. It's a puzzle. This time I was struck more by the class angle, and the dreadful cliches ground out by Susan's mother and sister who can't see good in anybody and think the country is going to hell in a handcart. I'd like to think that Amis is being very clever - that the theme of the book is that nobody is what they seem.Since nobody else has reviewed this book I'd better give a brief summary. Sta...

Wow. It's interesting to read a book like this, by an author who was revered in the 50s through the 80s, and see just how much social attitudes have changed over time. Amis is the master of deadpan understated British satire, and I laughed out loud at one scene in particular, a houseboat party where everyone gets sick. The absurd premise of the book: Stanley's son is diagnosed with acute schizoaffective disorder but to Stanley, the main deal is how the women in his life either help or torture hi...

I finished this book but didn't really get on with it that well and was glad to get it over with in the end.I didn't really engage with the main character or any of the others for that matter. That said, it was quite amusing but at times it felt very dated, not because of the outdated ideas and philosophies as such but more in a general sort of way (although many of the views expressed and language used by the characters would indeed be considered obsolete by today's standards).The story wasn't

Funny and sharply, even cruelly compassionate look at the life of Stanley and women around him, when his son gets sick. Like a movie by Alexander Payne. I wish Payne would make a movie-adaption of this.

Slightly amusing

Definitely an unusual book. I am a big fan of Amis' prose, and here he seems to be using the narrator's voice, spoken in long, loopy sentences full of ambivalence, to create a psychological profile of someone controlled by the British class system, in particular the part that structures relationships between men and women. Stanley is the pale background against which the fancy, fucked-up caricatures of Trish Collings, Lady Day, Nowell, and his sister in law are displayed. Trish Collings -- wow.

Don't read this until you read something else by Amis that you like. I read Lucky Jim first and it's good and funny, so that's okay; and The Old Devils , which he wrote much later, is great. But in between, Amis went through a long emotional meltdown and the result is really painful to read; by the end, this book is basically a street-corner rant on how women are, by nature, literally unable to tell right from wrong and are all manipulative liars. We know this because Stanley, a guy with

The main plot of the whole novel is basically about how all women are naturally self-centered,cunning and enjoy taking pleasure in ruining the lives of men.Stanley and all his friends have poor taste in women and have used that selection of spiteful, attention-seeking, catty...witches to judge the rest of the female species.The main character is married to a woman who doesn't seem to like not having the spotlight and especially when things don't go her way. At first, she seems al right and a wom...

I really like most of Kingsley Amis's novels. This one just isn't very good. The narrator's son develops schizophrenia and starts behaving strangely and dangerously. It could be an interesting premise for a novel. Instead, it becomes a polemic with a ridiculous premise. The narrator is the lone voice of reason and he concludes that, sure his son suffers from delusions and had to go to a hospital because he was wielding a knife, but as crazy as he is, it pales in comparison to women. Any woman in...

An interesting read, quirky, amusing and I assume dealing with his own or a friend's horrible and believable challenge with the UK mental health system. May I never need to deal with that. But then he goes and ruins it, absolutely, with a 2 page misogynistic diatribe tacked onto the end. Immediately when reading I thought, this conversation sounds stilted, like a bad script, and then I hit the content of the conversation. It was awful. It ruined the book and I would say make future readings of h...

Don't mention the young! You'll set him off. Actually, women are his main target, but he needs no prompting to set off on a female-bashing extravaganza. Unfortunately, in this book Amis's rants are largely devoid of his trademark humour, which only emerges between rants. Unless, that is, he has set up his main character as a caricature so we can laugh at him. Fortunately, Amis has a way with words and tells a story very well.

Only of interest if one is into the life and career of Kingsley Amis. His style became so slangy and messy that in much of this book it's hard to recognize him as the same man who wrote Lucky Jim. But still, here and there are flashes of his wit and eye for characters.

well, that explains everything

An ironic look at the relations between the sexes in the 80s, narrated by Stanley, who is trying to fit in (upper) middleclass society of London. Some parts are amusing but the novel has dated a lot.