Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kingsley Amis' 1954 novel is a humorous take on the professional and romantic plight of a history lecturer in a probationary position at a provincial university in England. Several scenes are side-splittingly funny: the incident with the destruction of bedding in a senior professor's guest bedroom made me laugh hysterically for several minutes. In addition, we get sharp satire of university life and human foibles in general.

(It is totally my fault - not the author's - that I dislike his writing style with its abundance of dialogues and overflow of words. Maybe I should have waited a few weeks after reading the brilliant prose of Ishiguro, Coetzee, and Banville.)

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