Vicar of Sorrows by A.N. Wilson

Francis Kreer is a clergyman who does not believe in God and a married man who does not love his wife. These things don't seem to matter until he suffers series of emotional crises. His mother dies, leaving him to discover that she had a lover. Then he falls painfully in love himself. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Initially, this latest work by prolific novelist ( Daughters of Albion ) and biographer ( Jesus ) Wilson, apparently invites readers onto his familiar, comfortably bourgeois and somewhat parochial territory, only to veer from the vicarage and village drawing rooms into darker, unexpectedly stark regions of the heart and mind. Out of love with his wife, life and God, faithless Anglican clergyman Francis Kreer finds his mother's death the coup de grace. Sent hurtling into the maw of midlife crisis, he clings desperately to the hope offered by his newfound love for a teenage runaway. Out of this story, whose twists and turns constantly confound expectations, Wilson fashions a somber meditation on the power of love in a godless and virtually hopeless world. Echoes of Austen--in his surprisingly wide-ranging and barbed social critique--and Dickens--in the panoply of types from John Major's Britain (gay priest, junkie thief, lecherous vet), that throng his pages--show Wilson to be aiming high. Even his most infuriating tics (e.g., lengthy digressions into the arcana of Anglo - Catholic devotional practice) are testimony to his ambitious reach. If Wilson's narrative eventually spirals out of his control on its breathless way to a Christmas Day climax on London's sunless streets, readers will surely forgive him after a journey far more unsettling and moving than any offered by his previous work. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. About the Author A. N. Wilson taught English language and literature at New College, Oxford. From Library Journal In his 1992 biography, Wilson made clear his acceptance of the human, but rejection of the divine, Jesus ( Jesus, LJ 9/15/92). This theme carries over into his latest and, to date, best novel, in which he takes on the Anglican church and middle-class sanctimony. Francis Kreer, the vicar of sorrows, is a clergyman who has lost his belief in God and is trapped in a loveless marriage. He remains a faithful shepherd to his flock until a chain of events, triggered by his mother's death and the discovery that she once had an illicit love affair, propels him into madness and despair. Job-like, he loses all he holds dear and is compelled to confront the terrible truth about life on this planet, truth that the biblical writers understood but that the bland bishops do not: the fact of death, the fact of evil, the difficulty of virtue, the fickleness of one's own heart. God may not exist, but the human heart still needs to find him. It is this fact, Wilson suggests, that makes us beautiful beings. Wilson's send-up of the Anglican clergy and the all-too-typical parishoner frequently lighten the otherwise serious tone of this Waugh-like work. Highly recommended for serious collections of British fiction. - David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review A marvelously conceived novel that takes on everything from the Church of England to modern marriage in its sendup of contemporary mores. - Gail Caldwell, Boston Sunday Globe Quite superb. . . . Wilson's eye on the minefields of English social and clerical life is devastatingly accurate. - Gabrielle Donnelly, Los Angeles Times Terrifically funny and at the same time terrifically sad. . . . Mr. Wilson is a brilliantly mordant observer of human types, of which this book offers a merciless catalogue. - National Review A journey far more unsettling and moving that any offered in his previous work. - Publishers Weekly Entertaining, perceptive, and affecting. . . . His best novel yet. - The Independent [London] From the Back Cover In this powerful novel that will confirm his reputation as one of Britain's brightest literary lights, A.N. Wilson recounts the downward spiral of Francis Kreer, a clergyman who has stopped believing in God and whose marriage has begun to come apart at the seams. When his mother dies, Francis is shocked to discover that she had a lover and that he must share his inheritance with this odious man. Then Francis falls in love--painfully, absolutely--with an irresistible but most unsuitable young woman. Wilson traces Francis's descent through various circles of the English establishment and counterculture, a tragi-comic journey that takes the hero to the outer edges of both absurdity and despair. From Kirkus Reviews The prolific novelist and biographer, and well-known apostate from the Church of England, here records in fiction a similar loss of faith. More so than his previous novels (Daughters of Albion, etc.), this is very much of our times, and incorporates language and themes unusual for this once veddy proper Englishman. Francis Kreer, a middle-aged vicar in a small London suburb, seems the perfect clergyman: his theology is mainstream C of E, his family life is suitably dull, and he even brushes up his classics with a few friendly parishioners. But Francis's world comes tumbling down when his mother dies unexpectedly, having added a disturbing codicil to her will: She leaves a significant part of her sizable estate to a former lover. Suddenly, Francis indulges his worst thoughts and emotions. His twitty, girlish wife disgusts him, causing her to have panic attacks; he begins to neglect his beloved daughter; and, worst of all, career-wise, he no longer believes in God. The moment Francis begins to ``go funny,'' the parish begins to disintegrate. The obnoxious Low Church couple, the Spittles, raise their troublemaking to a new level when Mrs. Spittle publicly (and absurdly) accuses Francis of sexually accosting her. Francis's best friend from seminary is no help either--an effeminate Anglo-Catholic, he's already been sanctioned by the Archbishop for some public restroom exploits. Just as Francis's mania increases, a band of hippie wanderers set up camp nearby, and among the scruffy bunch Francis spots his salvation: a beautiful young violinist who dropped out of conservatory to bum around with her junky boyfriend. While Francis neglects parish duties and pursues the girl, his own daughter becomes a religious fanatic, hoping Jesus will restore her family. But things get only worse. By the end, Francis has gone completely bonkers. Certainly the darkest of Wilson's novels: a superb web of secrets and misunderstandings that ends with an affirmation--all the more powerful for being hard-earned. -- Copyright 1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. From Booklist The Reverend Kreer, ordained and sanctified for two decades, serves a Thames Valley vicarage, but he's an atheist. Perhaps worse, the humdrum rhythms of his petty-minded flock and irritation with his wife have combined to erode his capacity for happiness. Kreer wallows in the Slough of Despond, and Wilson increases his protagonist's derangement by dashing each new hope. The vicar's beloved mum redoes her will, then dies. Deprived of his full inheritance, he broods, cherishes his hatred of his wife, and becomes infatuated with a young girl in an itinerant band of miscreants who wander into the vicinity. Their entrance furnishes devices (a stolen crucifix; a furtive meeting) that the church's most venomous gossip (whose name, Mrs. Spittle, comes drippingly off the tongue) seizes upon to scandalize Kreer. Her intrigues work, and Kreer ends up a crazed wanderer in London. Using interior monologue, Wilson has skillfully wrought a mood of melancholy, heartless fate, and silent suffering, all the while sustaining fear for the action's outcome and pity for the reverend's fall. Stylish and allusive, this superior work adds to Wilson's proven accomplishments in Jesus: A Biography and the novel Daughters of Albion (1991). Gilbert Taylor