I reread Girl, 20 and had new thoughts about my previously uncharitable assessment. Some of the criticisms still stand: the novel isn’t a great one. But it does have moments of poignant humor, even if it doesn’t transcend its limits as social commentary anchored in the time and place it was written.

The hapless narrator, a nattering mandarin of the classical music profession, is of little use to anyone, including himself, although he does follow in the tradition of Gatsby and All the King’s Men in following a greater man. The narrators in those novels are more portentous and at least somewhat more self-aware than Douglas Yandell, whose perpetual bumbling is all the more amusing because he seems to take himself seriously enough that he’s not an idiot but not so seriously that we hate him. In the margin of one page I wrote “This is so ridiculous yet… good.” It came from a scene in which the older wife confronts the much younger mistress and a fight ensues for no particular reason—as fights often do:

[Sylvia the mistress] advanced on Kitty [the wife], who swung her umbrella; a mistake, for any umbrella, though a potentially dangerous lance, is an effective club. Sylvia easily fended off the blow, and the two closed with each other. I came out of my lethargy, or put away my distaste for the prospect of touching Sylvia, and moved to intervene. She brought her knee up into my crotch, upon which I retired from the conflict for perhaps half a minute, listening vaguely to sounds of struggle and to cries of outrage from Kitty.

The altercation continues in a manner more appropriate to drunken clowns performing or intellectuals, which, when it comes to physical exertions, are probably not so dissimilar.

The odd register of events isn’t limited to fights. Here’s Yandell acting older than his age while Sir Roy acts much younger as a member of the faux rock band Pigs Out: “I registered a strong impression that, should the choice arise, I would reject them in favour of a joint Nazi-Soviet tribunal as arbiters of destiny […]” Sir Roy, Yandell’s idol, is behaving more like a man his daughter’s age, while Yandell, who is just 30, behaves more like a man Sir Roy’s age. This kind of mix-up drives Girl, 20, along with Kingsley Amis’ lucid, often understated prose, which improves as Girl, 20 advances and has traces of the liveliness of Lucky Jim. It’s still not a great novel, but something about Girl, 20 compelled me to pick it back up and give it another shot, which indicates that there’s something more within than I initially gave credit for.