Reviews

The Alteration by Kingsley Amis

mfox1018's review

Go to review page

2.0

I originally rated this three stars when I finished it last night, because I did enjoy reading it and it went very quickly, but upon reflection am downgrading it to two stars because of the ending.

SpoilerFirst of all, I hated the contrived irony of Hubert finally managing to escape his fate only to get his testicles all twisted (literally!) and need them removed anyway. I guess I'm glad that he did end up with a successful singing career, since he had to go through the procedure anyway, but it just seemed too contrived. Second, here I am enjoying the setting of this alternate version of Europe, liking the characters, wanting to know what happens to them, and then all of a sudden a story about one eleven-year-old boy has out of nowhere become a story about the Pope purposely starting a holy war in order to keep the population under control?! When his underlings' medical experiments about purposely causing an epidemic proved too difficult to control? It was jarring and I didn't buy it. I get what Amis was trying to do - he's obviously not a fan of the Catholic church - but it was way too heavy-handed and didn't seem to fit with the rest of the book (yes, I know it was foreshadowed briefly, but still).


There was still much to like about the book. I liked the characters, and the setting of an alternate Europe where Martin Luther never split from the church and science is banned was intriguing. There were a lot of entertaining in-jokes such as the characters reading a book by Philip K. Dick titled "The Man in the High Castle" that is an alternate history - that describes our own actual world (for those unfamiliar with it, [b:The Man in the High Castle|216363|The Man in the High Castle|Philip K. Dick|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347388495s/216363.jpg|2398287] is Dick's alternate history about if the Axis had won WW2). I enjoyed the experience of reading it, but just didn't like the ending. YMMV!

glenncolerussell's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0




The Alteration - Surely one of the most imaginative and oddest novels I’ve ever read, a striking cross between, believe it or not, Anthony Trollope and Philip K. Dick, as if Kingsley Amis wrote his novel on the weekends after sipping tea and chatting with Mr. Septimus Harding from Trollope’s The Warden on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and enjoying the time-bending hallucinogenic drug Chew-Z from Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch on Tuesday and Thursday. Sound incredible? It is incredible. Here are a number of facets of this literary diamond as to why it is both out-of-sight and a kissing cousin to our present world:

ALTERNATIVE HISTORY
It’s England and the year is 1976. There’s been no protestant reformation, no eighteenth century age of enlightenment, no Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud or Frederic Nietzsche. Europe has been in cultural deep freeze for the past nearly five hundred years, a continuation of the church dominated middle ages right up until the end of the twentieth century. Everything and everybody is part of Catholicism – even Jean-Paul Sartre is a Jesuit writing in Latin and David Hockney along with Willem de Kooning create religious art for the mother church.

THE ALTERATION
Ten-year-old Hubert Anvil has a special gift - he has, by far, the most beautiful singing voice in living memory. There would be great benefit to the church and, according to the Abbott and other church officials, greater glory to God almighty himself if Hubert submitted to a surgical operation, an “alteration,” so as to retain his superb God-given talent and become a world-renowned castrato. The theme of being castrated, living in arrested development resonates throughout the novel, to note just two: 1) European civilization held in check by demonizing all science and technology, and 2) literature held in check by making science fiction illegal, especially science fiction addressing imaginary alternate worlds or parallel histories.

CLANDESTINE READING
Back at the dormitory of their church-run school, Hubert and his buddies are addicted to their favorite kinds of banned books: TR and CW. And that's Time Romance (TR), science fiction with a focus on inventive ingenuity, and Counterfeit World (CW), anti-church novelistic twists to present-day reality. One of these CW books is written by an author with the name of Philip K. Dick, the title being The Man in the High Castle, an invented world free of church domination. For those familiar with the real PKD and his actual novel with this title featuring an imagined 1960s America after a Nazi and Japanese victory and also a novel within the novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, about a fictionalized world after a Nazi and Japanese defeat, we recognized Kingsley Amis has turned PKD’s novel inside out and upside down. As William Gibson writes in his Introduction to this New York Review Books (NYRB) edition: “This business of TR and CW strikes me, as it plays so artfully through the book, as likely the best Jorge Luis Borges story Jorge Luis Borges never wrote."

ACROSS THE POND
There is one province free from church dominion – a slice of America referred to as New England. Kingsley Amis adds even more spice to his counterfactual equation by having Hubert along with his three roommates discuss a Counterfeit World (CW) story that puts forth the preposterous notion this New England colony under the British Crown declared itself an independent republic in 1848 and now, in 1976, is the greatest power in the world. One of the boys reacts: “‘Wish-wash!’ said Decuman loudly, pulled himself up and repeated quietly, ‘wish-wash. That mean little den of thieves and savages the greatest Power in the world?’” Did I mention how The Alteration is kissing cousins with our present day?

NATIVE AMERICANS
One of my favorite parts of the novel is how Amis incorporates Native Americans (called “Indians” in the novel). The Indians share a large measure of the work for the New Englanders since in this version of history there never was any importation of slaves from Africa. One New Englander tells Hubert how these Indians are not to be treated as fully human, having smaller brain capacity and a stunted sense of morals (ah, another arrested development!). However, in many ways, Amis conveys the nobility and compassion of these non-Christian peoples in much the same manner as we find in James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans.

THE IRON FIST
Between sips of tea, many of these Brits who are members of the church chat about this man or that woman not heeding God’s will. If we read ever so slightly between the lines in Amis’s alternate world, we can see how religion is being used as a billy club to not only strangle an individual’s sexual activity and critical reasoning but to keep an entire society and culture within tightly circumscribed boundaries. Another William Gibson quote: “It’s a terrifyingly serene totalitarian nightmare, its massive stasis threatened only, we eventually discover, by the extent of its own success.” You do not have to be a fan of science fiction or alternative histories to take an enjoyable readerly plunge into this highly engaging, philosophic novel.


Kingsley Amis - Author with soaring imagination. The Alteration, a world where the priests burnt William Shakespeare's books and playhouse before excommunicating him and sending the playwright off to New England.

foulone's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark funny sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

oscarpatton's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

kylepotter's review

Go to review page

2.0

Minimal world building and 2-dimensional characters spouting purple prose made this novel a terrible slog. I quit at the midway point.

clw667's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

I was surprised by how much I liked this one!

makaylariley's review against another edition

Go to review page

2.0

This book was part of the required reading for my class on Historical Fiction.

I thought the premise was interesting: what if King Henry XIII’s older brother had never died and England had, therefore, never parted with the Catholic Church. I also felt a lot of sympathy and compassion for Hubert, the main character.

I did, however have a huge problem with the writing style. I thought it was very stilted and the pacing was poorly done. The hierarchy of the Church was a big deal in this, but was never explained and there were lots of invented terms and situations that were never really explained, making it confusing and sometimes difficult to read. While I really liked the idea and the characters felt like real people, I think the execution left a lot to be desired.

mrwcc's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

Loved this story. The ending is rough going considering the climactic-nature of latter portion of the story. Thoroughly recommend.

magdalenewindsor's review

Go to review page

2.0

I would be lying if I said I wasn't confused

scheu's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

Amis does an admirable job of world-building in a scant 200 pages or so.