A man spends a night at a B & B. Waking in the middle of the night, he recalls the trials and tribulations of an English adolescence and early manhood. This exquisite, tenderly observed and delightful Bildungsroman belongs to a genre which includes Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Sons and Lovers, The Catcher in the Rye, and Goodbye, Columbus - classic writing to which it very evidently owes nothing at all. Wildly...