Glittering Images: A Novel

by Susan Howatch

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first in Susan Howatch's acclaimed novels centering on the glorious Cathedral of Starbridge, Glittering Images is a masterful depiction of spiritual hubris, the seductions of power, and the moral dilemmas of England between the wars.

“Passionately eloquent . . . [A] tale of God, sex, love, self-analysis and forgiveness . . . The dialogue throughout this book is brilliantly crisp.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

It is the 1930s, and Charles Ashworth is dispatched by the Archbishop of Canterbury to learn the truth about the flamboyant Bishop of Starbridge, Adam Alexander Jardine, and his mousy wife. Do Jardine's outspoken denouncements of the Anglican Church's strict divorce laws have a personal motive? When he meets the cool and beautiful Lyle Christie, Mrs. Jardine's companion, Ashworth believes they do. But as he struggles to understand the strange relationships in the household, Ashworth ceases to be an innocent, objective observer. Slowly, he too is drawn into the secret drama that is being played out in the shadow of the cathedral, a drama that he could never have foreseen.

Praise for Glittering Images

“A terrific story . . . Glittering Images is driven by passion, emotional and spiritual, and its spiritual antagonists are brilliant characters.”—San Jose Mercury News

“She may well be the Anthony Trollope of the 20th century.”—Andrew Greeley, The Washington Post

“Bold and exciting.”—Los Angeles Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780449909805
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/17/1995
Series:	Starbridge , #1
Edition description:	REISSUE
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.47(w) x 8.39(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Susan Howatch was born in Surrey. After getting a degree in law, she emigrated to America, where she married, had a daughter, and embarked on a career as a writer. When she eventually left the United States, she lived in the Republic of Ireland for four years before returning to England. She spent time in Salisbury—which was the inspiration for her Starbridge sequence of novels—and now lives in London.

Read an Excerpt

“A bishop, I remind myself, is not quite as other men.”
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Glittering Images"
by .
Copyright © 1995 Susan Howatch.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

Passionately eloquent . . . [A] tale of God, sex, love, self-analysis and forgiveness . . . The dialogue throughout this book is brilliantly crisp.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“A terrific story . . . Glittering Images is driven by passion, emotional and spiritual, and its spiritual antagonists are brilliant characters.”—San Jose Mercury News

“She may well be the Anthony Trollope of the 20th century.”—Andrew Greeley, The Washington Post

“Bold and exciting.”—Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher

Howatch's outstanding gifts as a storyteller (Wheel of Fortune) are combined here with a new seriousness of theme; the result is a superior novel with bestselling potential. The ``glittering images'' of the title are those we present with pride to the world; in this case, the cherished images of charismatic, successful churchmen, elegant in their clerical robes, whose congregations are moved by their sermons. These are not the TV evangelists of the '80s, however, but clergymen of the 1930s, whose King has had to choose between his throne and marriage with a divorcee. A controversial speech on divorce reform in the House of Lords by the outspoken Bishop of Starbridge (a character based on Herbert Henson, Bishop of Hereford) provokes the Archbishop of Canterbury to dispatch his protege, Charles Ashworth, Doctor of Divinity, to look for any skeletons in the Bishop's closetor in his bedthat the gutter press could use to smear the Bishop and, by extension, the Church. Ashworth, a debonair widower, is immediately attracted to Lyle Christie, paid companion to Carrie Jardine, the Bishop's wife. Lyle first responds to, then flees from, Ashworth's admittedly forward embraces. When he discovers the reasons for her behavior he is hurled into a moral and spiritual crisis. There's no doubt that sex and religion can make exciting bedfellows; add mysteries within mysteries, scenes of charismatic spiritual healing and a deft creation of a middle-class milieu that disappeared with WW II, and you have an engrossing novel that challenges the reader's sense of the fine points of morality. Howatch succeeds in making the subtle and complex theological points of a spiritual transformation both credible and exciting in a narrative whose dramatic tension never abates. BOMC alternate. (October 8)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

When brilliant young theologian Charles Ashworth is sent by his mentor the Archbishop of Canterbury to investigate the possibly scandalous conduct of Alex Jardine, the bishop who criticized his superior's position on Edward VII's marriage, he little expects to embark on an investigation of his own. His cathartic encounter with the hypnotically enigmatic Jardine and his unusual household forces Charles and the reader on an agonizing exploration of the psyche behind the seemingly flat character of a superficial clergyman. Howatch's psychoanalytical study may conclude more quickly and neatly than real life, but that does not detract from its brilliance or impact. Highly recommended. Cynthia Johnson Wheal ler, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.

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