"The British Museum is Falling Down" by David Lodge

David Lodge, who sadly died recently, was one of my favourite novelists. While I have happily now read most of his fiction, applying a policy of healthy delayed gratification, I have always looked to hold back some for my future reading pleasure. After reading the many delightful obituaries that were published last month, I decided to release this one from its virtual cave and dive in. It is an early effort, having been published back in 1965, and it is not in all honesty anything like his best work. But it was still very enjoyable to read.

The action unfolds over a single day in the life of a twenty-five year old precariously employed postgraduate researcher called Adam Appleby who lives in South London with his young wife and three children. Money worries overshadow his life making the fear that he and his wife will conceive another child a real problem. But they are Catholics and so do not, in principle, use any form of contraception. He is studying some fairly obscure writers and is desperate to make his reputation and secure a permanent academic post.

The novel is essentially a farce, very much in the tradition of Kingsley Amis’s ‘Lucky Jim’ both in its setting and style. Early on it is really very funny, particularly the scenes involving Adam’s interactions with his highly precocious daughter and his parish priest. Later I found it to be less amusing, and was not so satisfied by the ending.

Much of the story unfolds in and around the British Museum reading room which at this time was the main venue at which scholars could access the stocks of books held in the British Library. These sections interested me in their celebration of this treasured, legendary and now defunct feature of London literary life. The book’s sexual and racial politics are of their time too and inevitably jar somewhat when read through contemporary eyes.

A light-heated campus-novel that is now a rather period piece, but great fun.