Customer Reviews

A Bottle in the Smoke

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This is the second of five novels in the Lampitt series: (1) Incline Our Hearts, (2) A Bottle in the Smoke, (3) Daughters of Albion, (4) Hearing Voices, and (5) A Watch in the Night. The first book is about the childhood and adolescence of Julian Ramsay, growing up in England in the mid-twentieth century with his uncle and aunt in a small-town vicarage and then at boarding school. In this second installment, Julian works in a pub, gets married, and publishes a novel. In all the books, Julian's life is entangled in strange ways with the lives of various members of the Lampitt family, including author James "Jimbo" Lampitt, and Jimbo's biographer. What I'm especially enjoying about these novels so far is Wilson's observations about growing up and adulthood.

I recently discovered A. N. Wilson's novels, and I wish he'd written more of them. (He's written lots of nonfiction, including biographies of Tolstoy and C. S. Lewis.) I also highly recommend Wilson's The Vicar of Sorrows.