Customer Reviews

Glittering Images

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In this and many of Susan Howatch's novels, the reader's challenge is to get past a plot which often crosses the boundaries into melodrama. Her insight, generally expressed more in her characters' dialogue (whether with others or interiorly), is superb, and she shows herself to be actually a very fine theologian, with an uncanny understanding of the conflicts in the spiritual life. My caveat to new readers of her work is that the story lines, clearly complicated with bizarre developments in order to explore new spiritual insights, can not only be diverting (in this work, one bizarre melodrama would have been sufficient without adding another), but can lead the lovers of mystery and romance genres to miss the insight which is Susan's strongest point.

The main character, Charles Ashworth, from whose point of view the novel is presented, is a brilliant study in genuine faith and conviction struggling with the conflicts of personal dilemma. Bishop Jardine, a great man in many ways, shows the capacity which deception has for leading the best of the clergy off the path. These are but two examples of the totally intriguing characterisations which Susan employs to captivate readers - and present theological truth in a fashion one may not even recognise, but which one shall ponder later.

Susan's being a master of the novelist's craft is shown, as one example, in how she depicts a sexual encounter, which in the wrong hands could have become lascivious or meaningless, into a keen expression of a turning point in Charles's life. It is not in any way offensive, because it has a tragic, desperate element, and brings his total confusion, heretherto sheltered well in an academic's tidy intellectuallism, to a point where recognition and redemption are possible.

With elements that would appeal to those with an interest in mystery, romance, Jungian psychology, or the spiritual life, this volume will fit well on many and diverse readers' shelves.

Just as Howatch's family sagas were written in a multi-person first-person narrator format, so was the Starbridge series, but this time each narrator gets a whole book instead of only a section of one.
Glittering Images is the first book in the series. I had already read all five of the family sagas before I had the courage to start on Starbridge; I was afraid that a whole series of books set in the Church of England could not help but be stuffy and priggish. But this of course is Susan Howatch, a master storyteller. And these books are considered by many to be an enormous development fromthe sagas.
In fact, I found the depth of character found in all the Starbridge even more impressive than in the sagas. She shows not only an extraordinarily deep understanding of the human condition, she also shows great compassion and warmth for all her characters so that even if they have weaknesses and make mistakes, we can nevertheless forgive and love them.
IN the first trilogy of books, set in the 1930's and 1940's, each of the three narrators is stripped down and turned inside out, so that the reader knows all there is to know about them.
In this first book we first meet Charles Ashworth, who will be a major player in the series. Charles has conservative leanings and a Middle Way churchmanship. As ever, Howatch succeeds in giving us an in-depth portrait of a very likeable and sincere man, and sets him in the middle of a story that simply pulls you through, unravelling secret after secret. A wonderful book, which made me immediately want to start on the next one in the series - Glamorous Powers!

1937: Charles Ashworth, young charming former Chaplain to Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, is asked to discreetly investigate the private life of the Bishop of Starbridge, Alex Jardine, an aggressive liberal. What he finds seems to horrifingly mirror what lurks in his own private life of hurt, tragedy, and guilt all hidden behind Ashworth's carefully crafted 'Glittering Image'. A brilliant novel about pastoral care and fundamental morality and Christ's grace and redemption.

Glittering Images is Howatch's first book in the "Church of England" series. It follows the main character, Charles Ashworth, as he sinks into a profound spiritual crisis and slowly emerges while reconciling himself with the familial and societal pressures he faces.

Howatch's biggest strength is her gift for dialoge, which is sharp and witty, and her understanding of Anglican theology and theologians. Her characters undergo religious psychoanalysis, and do so in a way that allows the reader to not only identify with them and their struggles, but also learn from their spiritual achievements, even if the reader is not spiritual themself.

I highly recommend this book, as well as the rest of the series, to anyone seeking an intelligent fiction novel.

I wasn't crazy about the style of this book-page after page of psychoanalytically-influenced dialogue between hyperarticulate and hyperaware characters-but the themes were intriguing. The glittering image of the title refer to the face that each of the characters presents to the world, masking the true insecurities and sins beneath. Howatch does a remarkable job of pulling her characters out from behind these images, then showing them slip back behind them in denial and fear. I also thought the book was an intriguing exploration of sin and lies, and took a realistic, complex approach to human sexuality and behavior (unlike most sanitized "Christian" fiction). I am very interested in the history of the 20th Century church, so I enjoyed peeking behind the curtain at the Anglicans.

This is the first in a series of a six novel series. Having already read them all, I'm going back to start again. Howatch does a remarkable job of illustrating how insidious and how damaging to the human soul living behind a "glittering image" can be...the tendency to offer a mask for the rest of the world to see that simply doesn't match the true inner self. For me, this book got *really* interesting at the midway point! Great read!

How much you like this novel may depend on how much analysis or therapy appeals to you. It also may depend on how you like sordid, steamy, lacivious details. In short, I loved it! When a minister with this church is in emotional trouble, he gets counselling through someone in the church. In this story, it is through a head monk. The minister finds himself wildly in love with a woman assistant living in the bishop's house with the bishop and his wife. Going right off the rails, the minister imagines a menage a trois among that threesome when the woman turns down his marriage proposal. This sends him into counselling with the monk. However, the source of the minister's problems goes way back into his own family and the two proceed to rip the veil off the past. Then the initial question repeats: is the minister imagining that the bishop is in a menage a trois keeping the minister from marrying the single woman in his household? If the Anglican church bears any real relationship to this novel, I feel cheated having been raised a Catholic! Who needs parishioners with these kinds of problems in the ranks?!

Susan Howatch has lifted the shroud on the spiritual reality in everyone's life. This moving and engrossing novel draws the reader into several layers of mystery as what is taken at face value is seen in a new and suprising light. May all who read it find themselves bathed in the light.

This book, and the series, are the best I've read in quite sometime. Susan successfully takes the reader behind the scenes of the church, and it's clergy. Engrossing you in Murder, Mayhem, Sex, Parenting, and Friendships. I have recommended this book to everyone I know. It makes you want the series to go on forever.

This is an interesting mix of elements. Glittering Images starts out as if it is going to be a detective novel of sorts, with the main character as a well-meaning if somewhat naive amateur sleuth, forced into this role by an elderly mentor. However, the story quickly moves through this, and through a stage of being more like comedy of manners, to being a psychological study of the main character, as he loses his well-educated objectivity and has to confront himself and his personal demons. The male characters are many-layered and interesting, and theological arguments are nicely woven into the novel. I think the female characters are less perceptively done--I don't think Lyle is a sympathetic character, and I think Charles' choice to re-live part of his own personal legacy with her is fraught with future risks.

I haven't read any more frm this series yet, but I will come back to it at some point.