Susan Howatch
Author of Glittering Images
About the Author
Susan Howatch was born on July 14, 1940 in England. She graduated from the University of London in 1961 and served as a law clerk and secretary in the early 1960s before becoming a full-time writer. She writes in a variety of genres, including mystery, romance, and historical fiction. Her books show more include The Dark Shore, April's Grave, Penmarric, and the six-volume Starbridge series. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Susan Howatch
The Dark Shore, The Waiting Sands, and Call in the Night: Susan Howatch Omnibus (2003) 13 copies, 1 review
The Susan Howatch Omnibus 3 copies
The Second Susan Howatch Omnibus The Devil on Lammas Night, Call in the Night, April's Grave 3 copies
The birth of the Starbridge novels 2 copies
ENTRE DIEU ET DIABLE 1 copy
Dimmornas hus 1 copy
Areias movediças 1 copy
ROUE DE LA FORTUNE 1 copy
Za lśniącą zasłoną 1 copy
Skremmende spor 1 copy
Any 1 copy
Jan-Yves recht en onrecht 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Other names
- Sturt, Susan Elizabeth
- Birthdate
- 1940-07-14
- Gender
- female
- Education
- King's College, London
- Occupations
- writer
- Agent
- Gillon Aitken Associates Ltd
- Short biography
- Born Susan Elizabeth Sturt in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, she was the daughter of a stockbroker, and went to school at Sutton High School. She was an only child whose father was killed during World War II, but she has described her childhood as a happy one.
She obtained a degree in law from King's College London in 1961. In 1964, she emigrated to the United States, where she worked as a secretary in New York City. She married Joseph Howatch, a sculptor and writer, that year and began her career as a writer, finding success almost immediately with her intricately detailed gothic novels. A daughter was born to the couple in 1971. Upon separating from her husband in 1975, Howatch returned to England, then lived in the Republic of Ireland from 1976–80 before moving back to England permanently in 1980.
After her latter return to England, Howatch found herself "rich, successful, and living exactly where I wanted to live," but feeling a spiritual emptiness which she ascribed to "trying to hold my divided self together" and questioning her life and what she should do with it.
She had settled in Salisbury out of love for the beauty of the town, but found herself increasingly drawn to Salisbury Cathedral; eventually she began to study Anglican Christianity in earnest. She experienced a spiritual epiphany, and concluded that she should continue to write novels, but to "set forth my discoveries in the light of faith, no matter how feeble and inadequate my beginner's faith was." This personal turning point culminated in Howatch's most successful and popular works, the Starbridge series. - Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Leatherhead, Surrey, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Leatherhead, Surrey, England, UK
New York, New York, USA
London, England, UK
Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, UK - Associated Place (for map)
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
Susan Howatch has struck gold with a literary formula that works: someone has a spiritual crisis and a member of the Church of England comes to the rescue with intense conversations and guidance. Most of the time, these crises involve sexual hang-ups and rocky marital relations usually brought on by long suffering family traumas. In Glittering Images Charles Asgood sought the spiritual consultation of Jonathan Darrow. In Glamorous Powers Jonathan Darrow conducts intense interviews with his show more superior. In Ultimate Prizes is it Neville Aysgarth's turn to take young and beautiful Dido Tallent under his wing as she seeks a religious education. After Tallent destroys Neville's psyche, he in turn needs rescue and finds it in Jonathan Darrow and Aidan Lucas.
The "ultimate prize" meant having the perfect spouse, the perfect family, the perfect career.
Neville Aysgarth is a mere forty-one years old; really too young to be an archdeacon. His spiritual philosophy and religious career was based on Charles Earle Raven, a Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Raven had a unique perspective, believing that science and theology belonged together. Aysgarth's game changes when he becomes a widower. His ultimate prize because an obsession. He loved the chase but not the win. It was this pursuit that ultimately demolished friendships, both political and personal.
As an aside, it is interesting to see another character's take on a previous character. Jonathan Darrow is disliked by Neville, but it is Darrow who introduces him to Aidan Lucas when Neville needed spiritual guidance. Additionally, Howatch cleverly reveals secrets about characters from previous stories so that more than once readers have that ah-ha moment. The title of the next book in the series usually pops up by the end of the book. show less
The "ultimate prize" meant having the perfect spouse, the perfect family, the perfect career.
Neville Aysgarth is a mere forty-one years old; really too young to be an archdeacon. His spiritual philosophy and religious career was based on Charles Earle Raven, a Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Raven had a unique perspective, believing that science and theology belonged together. Aysgarth's game changes when he becomes a widower. His ultimate prize because an obsession. He loved the chase but not the win. It was this pursuit that ultimately demolished friendships, both political and personal.
As an aside, it is interesting to see another character's take on a previous character. Jonathan Darrow is disliked by Neville, but it is Darrow who introduces him to Aidan Lucas when Neville needed spiritual guidance. Additionally, Howatch cleverly reveals secrets about characters from previous stories so that more than once readers have that ah-ha moment. The title of the next book in the series usually pops up by the end of the book. show less
Vicar Charles Ashworth agrees to become an archiepiscopal spy. What could be juicier? He has been tasked by the Archbishop of Canterbury with reading Bishop Jardine's private journal and search for illicit love letters to make sure nothing untoward is happening in the household. Rumors abound. Ashworth's cover story is that he is going to Starbridge Cathedral because he wants his students to learn more about Saint Anselm and Starbridge just happens to hold the only early manuscripts. As if show more orchestrated in advance, a dinner party discusses the subject of divorce as it relates to the Marriage Bill and the Bible. This is perfect cover for Charles' investigation, but it reveals deep, dark, and dirty secrets of his own. True to his past and unable to help himself, Charles falls in love with a member of the bishop's household; the very person causing the Archbishop's concern. From there, everything unravels at a rapid pace. Glittering Images becomes laden with psychobabble theology and therapy doubletalk. When Charles suffers from an emotional angst far heavier than he can handle, he seeks the counsel of Jon Darrow, a monk from the Fordite monastery. Thanks to Darrow's investigative interviews, sound consultation, and the subsequent wailing torment of Charles, the two discover Charles is of two distinct personalities. One maintains the glittering image of perfection while the other is a whiskey gulping, fornicating fool wracked with guilt. Is the man he has called 'father' to blame or is it the man who actually sired him? Uncovering layers of insecurity and irrational jealousy leads to a self-fulfilling prophesy. The more insecure Charles behaves, the less inclined people are to convince him of his worth. The fear of abandonment is not exclusive to Charles. Many other characters suffer the same terror of inadequacy. show less
I've seen Susan Howatch's ecclesiastical novels facetiously described as “surplice-rippers” - which is unfair, of course, but you can see why. There’s a late-Victorian earnestness about the way she deals with religious faith and a rather mid-twentieth-century lack of irony in her approach to sex and psycho-analysis. At one point in this book (the first in her Starbridge series), she seems to become aware of the difficulty and has two of her characters discuss whether they are caught up show more in a cross between Barchester Towers and Lady Chatterley’s lover. They decide that they aren't, of course. Perhaps a more apt comparison would have been with Zola’s Abbé Mouret’s sin, though, and as we worked towards the solution of the psychological mystery there was a kind of neat closure going on that seemed to come straight out of Agatha Christie (possibly deliberate - Roger Ackroyd is mentioned conspicuously early in the story). And the resolution does turn out to be the psychological equivalent of “the butler did it”.
Which is all to say that this isn't the sort of thing I usually enjoy. But in all fairness I have to say that Howatch does it extremely well. Despite the high-flown emotions, her characters are never altogether implausible, and she manages to stay convincingly in period (1937, before she was born) without much apparent effort. She’s obviously done her research and got a feel for the way clergymen spoke in the thirties. And I'm fairly confident that, if I knew more about theology and psycho-analysis, that would all turn out to be correct for the period too. show less
Which is all to say that this isn't the sort of thing I usually enjoy. But in all fairness I have to say that Howatch does it extremely well. Despite the high-flown emotions, her characters are never altogether implausible, and she manages to stay convincingly in period (1937, before she was born) without much apparent effort. She’s obviously done her research and got a feel for the way clergymen spoke in the thirties. And I'm fairly confident that, if I knew more about theology and psycho-analysis, that would all turn out to be correct for the period too. show less
As with every other Starbridge novel, Mystical Paths is designed to be read independently of others in the series, but it is recommended to read them in order. Characters who were in the background in previous novels jump to the forefront in later ones. This time, Jonathan Darrow's son, Nicholas, narrates the story. Nicholas and his father are modeled after the work of Christopher Bryant and are both psychics. Nicholas is now twenty-five years old and has a "sex-mess" in the middle of the show more 1960s. He believes he is one half of his father and suffers from somnambulism. Every night he has to tether himself to something before falling asleep for fear of wandering off somewhere. He leads a double life in order to protect his father, his other half. Yet at eighty-eight years old, Jonathan Darrow is still sharp as a tack and can run circles around his son. Like the other Howatch books, psychological situations are examined through a spiritual and theological lens with the help of a spiritual advisor or religious mentor. Mystical Paths is one of my favorites due to the plots many twists and turns.
I think I have said this before, but the benefit of reading the Starbridge series in order, one right after the other is that besides character development the reader gets the varying perspectives of the same history. Each character recalls the same point in time with different feelings and memories. It reminded me of Michael Dorris's Yellow Raft in Blue Water. show less
I think I have said this before, but the benefit of reading the Starbridge series in order, one right after the other is that besides character development the reader gets the varying perspectives of the same history. Each character recalls the same point in time with different feelings and memories. It reminded me of Michael Dorris's Yellow Raft in Blue Water. show less
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- Rating
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- ISBNs
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