The Alteration, Kingsley Amis

I do not recommend.

It starts out winsome.  Extremely winsome.  A cozy alternate history where England is still half-medieval, half-Victorian.  Ornate trains whisk sturdy yeomen over Channel-spanning bridges on pilgrimages to Rome.  Diplomats gather to pay their respects to England’s fallen king as the sung notes of the funeral mass soar in a time-hallowed cathedral.  (The protagonist is one of the choir boys singing said funeral  mass)

It’s fun.

But the one thing you can’t have in a mid-century novel is fun.

It’s grimily obsessed with sex.  Like a lot of mid-century novels you feel like the writer is getting off on their writing, which is gross.  I am fundamentally sympathetic to the point Amis seems to be making and still found myself repelled, eww.  I left the novel feeling certain that the author was a depraved damaged person with a hothouse psychological problem of one kind or another.

Second, its full on Leyenda Negra about the Catholics.  Plus, we get the cutting edge message that racism is bad.  Mixed with concerns about overpopulation.  Not a novel that has aged well.

Too bad.  It could have been timeless if it continued as it began.  But it was written to be relevant.