Unseen Things Above

by Catherine Fox

Overview

Who will be the next bishop of Lindchester? That's what everyone's been asking since bishop Paul Henderson resigned in haste and a whiff of scandal.

Unseen Things Above rejoins our friends in the diocese as they address themselves to the labyrinthine process of appointing his replacement.

When they aren't arguing about love and marriage, that is. Should Jane renounce her feminist orthodoxy and wed the manly archdeacon? Could Father Ed defy the House of Bishops and marry Neil? And how many hearts will start atrembling when the gorgeous but volatile Freddie May returns to the Cathedral Close?

Come, dear reader, and clamber once again onto the liturgical rollercoaster. Travel from Easter to Advent with bishops, archbishops, and all the company of Lindchester. Hang on to your hat as you're whirled through ups and downs and twists of plot. There are unseen things above, all right. But if you manage to open your eyes, the view from the top is glorious.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781910674239
Publisher:	SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge)
Publication date:	06/18/2015
Series:	The Lindchester Chronicles , #2
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Catherine Fox is an established and popular author. Her debut novel, Angels and Men (reissued in 2014) was a Sunday Times Pick of the Year. Her other books include The Benefits of Passion and Love for the Lost (reissued in 2015), Acts and Omissions which was chosen as a Guardian Book of 2014, and the sequel to Unseen Things Above, Realms of Glory (2017). Catherine lectures at Manchester Metropolitan Universityand is married to the Bishop of Sheffield.

Editorial Reviews

‘Brims with wit and heart, acknowledging the awkwardness and consolations of Anglicanism in the twenty-first century. Hugely entertaining and highly recommended.’

Acts and Omissions is brave and beautiful, devastatingly honest, mercilessly funny, fundamentally kind.’

From the Publisher

Janet Beer, vice-chancellor, University of Liverpool, has some seasonal advice for readers. “Unsure what to buy the Trollope devotee in your life for Christmas? Look no further than Catherine Fox’s Acts and Omissions (SPCK, 2014) and Unseen Things Above (Marylebone House, 2015) for a refresher course not only in cathedral politics, but also a set of profound, although lightly drawn, insights into the contemporary Anglican communion. This is not pastiche: Fox’s voice is not Trollope’s, it is her own – witty, meddling, compassionate – and in this last regard she most resembles her predecessor. The men and women of the church in Fox’s world go about their professional and personal lives much as the rest of us do. They are susceptible to temptation, and to the odd bit of inappropriate behaviour, but in the main their stories are compelling because the ethical dilemmas that afflict us all from time to time are their daily bread but exotic fare for most readers.

Janet Beer

UNSEEN Things Above by Catherine Fox (Marylebone House, £9.99) is the sequel to “Acts and Omissions”
published last year. At the end of the previous volume we left the good folk of the cathedral close at Lindchester to their preparations for Christmas. We now rejoin the plot and find ourselves skipped forward to April and the diocese continues to be in crisis and the cathedral continues to be in a state of agitation.

Troublesome
Who shall be the new bishop? Will the troubled and troublesome Freddy May ever settle down and must the cathedral really give him a job? Will the archdeacon marry his lovely Jane? Will Ed get to marry his lovely Neil? Will Bishop Harry have a nervous breakdown before he has a heart attack? Will the bishop’s chaplain ever get over himself? Will the Church of England get over its alleged institutional homophobia? Will the Church of England ever consecrate a woman bishop? Oh my goodness, so much trauma and tribulation, it could only be the Church! This is a book in which, while well-written as ever, the dialogue does get somewhat drowned out by the noise of grinding axes. Do not misunderstand me, the issues addressed are important issues of justice and it is right that they are addressed. However, where in the previous volume the issues ran alongside the story, in this book the issues have become the story.

Required
Fox tells of the church in which couples living in a same-sex civil partnership are required to remain celibate and uses the opportunity for the archdeacon to enter into a civil partnership with his opposite-sex partner in New Zealand to highlight a point of hypocrisy. She pushes further in reminding the reader that it is now legal for same-sex couples to be married and yet Fr Ed is forbidden by the Church from marrying his same sex partner. In both of these instances, the partners of the clergy who find themselves in such a bind are lay people and neither are all that enamoured by the Church. Some interesting dialogue ensues as Jane and Neil harangue their partners about their experience of a church which encroaches into parts of life which angels may fear to tread! This is a good book and well worth reading. It would be easy for us Methodists to gloat at the predicament of the Church of England and say that such things would not happen in our Church, but we would be wrong to do so.

Topic
The issues are live issues and are going to be the topic of consideration across the Connexion over coming months. Yes, it’s a novel, but it is one which helps put flesh on the bones of discussion and conflict that is already out there.

The Rev Dr Adrian Burdon