Peter Clenott

Oliver Gold, the brilliant, ascetic writer and philosopher, has lived quietly and happily for eight years on the outskirts of London as a lodger in 12 Wagner Rise. His sudden decision to marry and move to America precipitates a crisis in this household of women, all of whom owe fierce, idiosyncratic allegiance to Oliver and want to save him and their world from an unsuitable, inexplicable match. Yet in the end it is only Bobs, the twelve-year-old who is Oliver's constant companion, who knows his dangerous secret: it is from her that Oliver attempts to flee. In a series of dramatic tableaux, unfolding over the course of many years, A. N. Wilson threads the dark labyrinths of Wagner Rise and illuminates the tragic consequences of these attachments. With this provocative novel about forbidden love, Wilson has produced a stunning, haunting literary work-a Lolita for our times. "A respectable, genuine, intellectual portrait of a pedophile that also makes for a gripper indeed. . . . Sex-tormented Oliver . . . in spite of all (and 'all' includes plenty) remains believably human, thanks to the estimably gifted Wilson." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Wicked English wit . . . has the kind of sly humor where grimness itself becomes the joke." - The New Yorker "Well written and sensitively realized. . . . [Wilson] lets the characters' fates unfold over the years and shows, touchingly, how the pain and self-deception at 12 Wagner Rise taints all their lives." - Philadelphia Inquirer