Sinister Street

Sinister Street is a 1913-14 novel or bildungsroman about a young man's coming of age. The child of an unconventional love affair, Michael Fane grows up with more than his share of passion and ambition. His vague and beautiful mother drifts in and out of his life, and he passes from the care of a governess into the rougher discipline of a public school and then on to young manhood at Oxford. Attracted at first by the religious life, Micahel soon finds that London at the end of the nineteenth century offers more worldly diversions. It is as the result of a liaison with the fascinating and destructive Lily that he begins to see that his future lies in his own hands.