The Green Man (New York Review Books Classics)

Maurice Allington has reached middle age and is haunted by death. As he says, I honestly cant see why everybody who isnt a child, everybody whos theoretically old enough to have understood what death means, doesnt spend all his time thinking about it. Its a pretty arresting thought. He also happens to own and run a country inn that is haunted. The Green Man opens as Maurices father drops dead (had he seen something in the room?) and continues as friends and family convene for the funeral.

Maurices problems are many and increasing: How to deal with his own declining health? How to reach out to a teenage daughter who watches TV all the time? How to get his best friends wife in the sack? How to find another drink? (And another.) And then there is always death.

The Green Man is a ghost story that hits a live nerve, a very black comedy with an uncannily happy ending: in other words, Kingsley Amis at his best.