Kingsley Amis once remarked of Peter De Vries: "I would rate him the funniest serious writer on either side of the Atlantic." De Vries's humour derives not just from his remarkable capacity for word play, but from his ability to invent situations that invert the natural order of things…. De Vries's puns are ingenious enough to justify the elaborate situations often needed to set them up: in an early novel, for example, he has someone throwing stones at seabirds in order that, on being asked what he is doing, he can remark "I'm leaving no tern unstoned" Some of De Vries's aphorisms are worthy of Oscar Wilde, and his characters are never short of repartee. The ultramodern young clergyman of Mackerel Plaza is caught staring at a girl's legs; "Stop looking at my legs", she says, to which he replies "Don't worry, ma'am, my thoughts were on higher...