Customer Reviews

The High Flyer (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

My eagerly-awaited copy of The High Flier now lies on the living room floor, tempting me to read it all over again. As usual, once I started this latest novel by Susan Howatch, I couldn't bear to put it down!

Set in 1990, this book is the latest installment in the Starbridge series and once again we see Alice, Nick Darrow, and the other denizens of the Healing Centre at St. Benet's church. This time, however, the story is told from the point of view of Ms. Carter Graham, a 35-year-old lawyer who nearly "has it all."

Carter's life is following her plan perfectly, and her most recent success is her marriage to Kim, a fellow lawyer-barracuda. Things aren't what they seem to be, though, and Carter finds herself sorely in need of the healing powers of Nick Darrow and crew.

As with all of Howatch's books, the emotional wrenching and soul-searching is so powerful that I found myself experiencing it on a personal level. Once again, the Ultimate Reality is explored and experienced, however reluctantly.

And now I know that I will be forced to wait several more years until Ms. Howatch produces another novel. My name will be on the waiting list!

Once again Ms. Howatch, masterful author of her 6-volume Starbridge series and other novels such as "The Rich Are Different" and "Wheel of Fortune", weaves a thrilling plot and fascinating new characters together in her latest novel, "The High Flyer". I won't reiterate the plot, as this Amazon.com page will detail all one needs to know very well without my help. However, I will say that - once again - I'm having difficult tearing myself away from the book. I want to take this work slowly yet, as is always the case with Ms. Howatch, I find I can't stop once I start a chapter or a section. I'm happy to report the re-appearance (still in vital and believable form) of Nicholas Darrow, Lewis Hall and Alice Fletcher from the latter volumes of the Starbridge series. Seeing them again felt like a reunion with old friends. They may be familiar characters but they are as fresh as newcomers Carter Graham, her mysterious husband, Kim, and the intriguing and ever-so-sexy Eric Tucker. Being a writer myself, I know how difficult it is to create characters - then recycle them - as believable entities. With "The High Flyer" - as with all of Ms. Howatch's novels - I just stand back and admire and pray that someday my talents will equal one-tenth the writing skills she displays, once again, so well in this novel. Additionally, her Starbridge series and "The High Flyer" continue to bring me a spiritual depth of story on a realistic, rational and intellectual plane that I get nowhere else, either in novels or organised religion or philosophical debate. Her characters' lives are blown apart, only to come together again through ministry, faith and a continuing belief in the elasticity of the human spirit. As with all her other works, this one is one you shouldn't miss. (My only regret is having to wait 3-4 years between fixes!)

High Flyer is Susan Howach at her best and beyond. The first half of this novel is so fast paced it's a roller coaster ride of surprise after surprise as the drama unfolds. Just when you think you've figured out the story's direction, it turns on a dime and takes a whole new twist. You won't be able to anticipate this compelling tale. It's a contemporary, psychological thriller, a romance, and a mystery involving the supernatural, the church, sex and big business in a brilliant mix that grips the reader right from the start. The second half of the book is paced just a bit slower holding the reader captive in a reflective study that brings unexpected clarity to what you think you already understood. A compelling read! Old familiar characters and fascinating new ones keeps your interest from start to finish.

This is a novel about spiritual warfare.

The protagonists are a sinister New Age practitioner called Mrs. Mayfield, and two flawed, eccentric Anglican priests. Caught in the middle are the narrator, a ferocious thirtysomething career woman called Carter Graham, and her husband Kim.

The first half of the book is a fast-moving adventure story, with the plot being driven by revelations about Kim's past (involving Mrs. Mayfield, and his first wife, Sophie). For much of the second half the pace slows and more serious themes emerge. Carter moves from her earlier indifference to Christianity towards a tentative engagement. There is much discussion of the nature of evil.

The underlying theology is Anglican (roughly equates to Episcopalian), liberal but clearly supernaturalist, and greatly informed by Jung.

I enjoyed this book. I haven't read any of Susan Howatch's novels before, and I am sure I shall read others. It's hard to find a writer to compare her with (some have apparently suggested Trollope, which I think is just batty). To me she reads like a modern and much more populist version of Charles Williams (novelist from the 1930s and 1940s and friend of C.S. Lewis).

I had some reservations. I felt that a reader who just wanted a good adventure story and didn't have any interest in theology or psychology would find parts of the book tedious and would want to skip them. I also found the writing uneven. Some of the dialogue clunks. Carter's idiosyncratic vocabulary (e.g. "tiger-thumpers" for sexist men who try to sabotage high-flying women) became tiresome after a while. And the social context of the characters is not always happily observed. E.g. I don't believe that a partner in a London commercial law firm would shop for an important dinner party at the local branch of Safeways supermarket!

Despite these reservations I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone who shares the author's interests. Three stars is a fair verdict.

I truly love Susan Howatch's writing style. She is delightfully articulate and her characters are all so well defined. I started off really loving the book, but after reading more and more of it, I began to feel as though she wrote this book on several different occassions and just couldn't figure out which direction to go in next. The characters became disappointing when they lost their credibility. I just couldn't buy into the whole tangled web after a while; it didn't sound at all plausible. I couldn't figure out why the main character, Carter, would feel anything other than repulsion for this man that was once her husband. He admits to horrific acts of vulgarity and violence, lies to her over and over and over, and then she mourns for the "Kim she once loved". I truly lost interest and only finished it because I had read so much of it, I needed to finally be done with it. I recommended this book after the first hundred pages. Now, after page four hundred and somthing, I would say don't waste your time!

I think that Susan Howatch is one of the most gifted of the
contemporary novelists.

In this, her current work, we're given a main character by the
name of Carter Graham who's a skilled and successful lawyer.
She's learned to be tough and work in the masculine world of
high flyers. Carter shuns her real name, Catherine and all of
the nicknames that are used by her family like Katie and Kitty.
In the shedding of her old names, Carter feels stronger and in
control of her life.

In her mid-thirties, she meets the man who appears to fulfill
her qualifications for marriage. Kim Betz is attractive, sexy,
dynamic and very successful. Carter falls in love and marries
Kim only to find out that he is haunted by his past. Kim's
life seems to be riddled with secrets. His involvement with a
psychic healer adds another twist to the story.

This is a love story wrapped up in mystery and lies. The author has combined a walk into mysticism and the occult into a fascinating tale. The mixture of characters makes this
vintage Howatch.

Thank God for novelists like Susan Howatch. At a time when Christian novels are so full of the apocalypse and end of days Ms. Howatch's The High Flyer comes through! An intelligent story of the struggle of good against evil and the ultimate gift of redemption that sings praise to the Living God with faith and reason. It is obvious that Ms. Howatch has been well blessed with a healthy vibrant faith that is fully integrated with an equally healthy and strong intellect.

Perhaps Carter's dialogue is a little tough to take, but then so is Carter. (Who isn't when they think they have all the answers?) In a world where success is the misguided measure of our worth as human beings, I found Carter to be very familiar in her failings, in her strengths, her struggle, and in her vulnerability. And so very redeemable. Thank God for the journey and the gentle companion who is never what we expect.

P.S. David Ford's "The Shape of Living" is a very special added bonus!

Is this the same author who wrote the Starbridge series? I found this book to be contrived and overwritten--the story could have been told in half the space. There is a wearisome repetition of coined words; the dialogue is tedious as the main character examines her soul/values/morals at length with everyone who crosses her path. Enough!

I've read this book 3 times since it was published, as I do all Howatch's books. This novel gives us yet another twist on Nicholas and his coterie that is compelling and thoughtful, but also fun to read. Her books on the church consistently speak to me in a way that nothing else about Christianity does. Because of her, I'm becoming a "closet" Christian! I wish the Christians I've encountered were more like her characters -- real people with problems but also with integrity and commitment to something greater than themselves. When they are portrayed as rigid or stiff necked, the plot usually involves a BIG dose of humility accompanied by a change in perspective. These novels inspired me to expand my reading to include Farrer, Underhill, Julian of Norwich, and The Cloud of Unknowing. I check every week to see if she's got a new book coming out -- hope it's soon!

I am a long time reader of Susan Howatch since her Penmarric days. I was thrilled with her Starbridge series, which showed her maturation as an author with her subject matter but which left in place her wonderful plots and characterizations. A Howatch book is still, even in this less than stellar attempt, an invitation to late nights and stalled plans.

However her last 3 or 4 books (including the last 2 in the Starbridge series) are starting to get stale. How many times will Ms. Howatch present us with demonic possession, with psychic powers, with people endlessly crying over their past? Yes, yes, by now we know that psychological disintegration and spiritual crises are but two sides of the same coin. We know that exorcism is the flip side of psychoanalysis. And we know that showing the cross and loudly saying the name of Jesus Christ will banish any demons. But do we need to read this over and over again? Isn't Ms. Howatch a little bit tired of all this?

Ms. Howatch has so much talent as a writer that I hope she moves on and gives us a book (or set of books) with the freshness and brilliance of Glittering Images or Glamorous Powers.