Customer Reviews

Incline Our Hearts.

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I enjoyed this novel immensely. It has similarities to BRIDESHEAD REVISITED with the importance of religion and focus on British aristocracy in decline, and the narrator looks back and comments on his coming-of-age with the wisdom of old age, but here it is just "Stage One" of his life, with a sequel obviously to come.

Speaking of the sequels, I had trouble trying to find the name of the next book, so to aid others here are the titles of the "Lampitt Chronicles" (according to the "also by A.N. Wilson" list I found in a recent novel):

Incline Our Hearts

A Bottle in the Smoke

Daughters of Albion

Hearing Voices

A Watch in the Night

I haven't read any of the others yet, but INCLINE OUR HEARTS is funny, interesting re: random English attitudes toward class, boarding school, radio, the Church of England, etc., with a protagonist you care about. I recommend it.

This is the story of 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.

This novel is the first in the Lampitt series, which continues with A Bottle in the Smoke, Daughters of Albion, Hearing Voices, and A Watch in the Night. The books proceed through Julian's life and chronicle the strange ways in which his life is entangled 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 this series so far (I just finished the second book) 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.