Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim

Something about the author
Kingsley Amis was born in London in 1922 as the only child of a business clerk. He studied at St. John's College.There he joined the Communist Party. After the military service Amis worked as a lecturer in Cambridge University. His son Martin Amis (famous writer) was born in 1949. Amis started his carrer of novelist with LUCKY JIM (1954) and he gained a great success. After the death of Ian Fleming in 1964, Amis wrote some adventures of James Bond. He wrote detective stories and science fiction too. In the 1980s Amis won the Booker Prize. He was knighted in 1990. Kingsley Amis died in 1995 at the age of 73 with over 20 novels written. He was a member of the generation called „angry young men“.

The story
"Lucky Jim" is the nickname for the main character James Dixon. The story starts at a university somewhere in England. Jim Dixon works here as a lecturer of history. He lives near the university and he has non-function relation with Margaret Peel. She works at university too. She almost committed suicide because some man named Catchpole divorced with her. His professor, Welch, invited him for a weekend. He went there with Margaret. He met there Christine she was a lover of Welch`s son Bertrand. But the party was very boring and Dixon went to a pub. He was so drunk when he returned and he almost burnt the sheets in his room. Because he was afraid that he would loose his job he turned on Christine for help. They became good friends. At a party one week later he met her again and at the end of the evening he brought her home in a cab. She told him she didn`t like Bertrand but she was going to marry him. She fell in love with Dixon and it was the beginning of a love-story. Unfortunately few days later when they met their relation ended because they knew they both already had a relation. Christine had to go to London. Two weeks later Dixon had an important lecture about history of England. He was nervous so he drank. In the lecture he told his opinions about Welch and other people to everybody. He was fired from the university. Next day Mr.Catchpole met him and told him about his relation with Margaret. Catchpole offered Jim a job of a personal clerk. He accepted and he was surprised because Mr. Catchpole was the uncle of Christine.

Jim met her at the train station and they fell in love again and now without any problems because they both had broken relations with their former partners.

My opinion
At the beginning of the story Dixon is shy and hypocritical because he is afraid of loosing his job. At the end he says what he really thinks and he became a „Lucky Jim“. K. Amis is telling his story seriously and with humour too. It forced me to think about relations between people.