Glittering Images

Rating:
Summary: First of an excellent series of Church novels
Review: 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.

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Summary: Anglican Church, A Psychotherapeutic Fix
Review: 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?!

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing characters and brilliant insight
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: In great Howatch tradition
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: A psychological thriller
Review: No blood. No gore. It takes a skilled writer in this day and age to write a suspense-filled story and yet dispense with what others consider almost essential elements these days. Much of the story is about what goes on in the mind of the main protagonist. Themes are sex, God, repentance and an Anglo Catholic version of psychoanalysis. Slow reading, but well worth the effort.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect Title
Review: Read this book (with lots of patience) if you are looking to understand your own 'glittering image.' We all seem to have one whether or not we are aware of it.

The characters were very well defined. What was not described was easy to fill in with my imagination.

The reason I only rated this book a 3 was that it went on and on and on. Even when the story finally became interesting, the same facts were repeated over and over in different ways. Often, I wanted to skip over some of the repetitions but was afraid I would miss some new point so I read every word to the very end. I had to finish this book for understanding only and not for pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: A truth to learn.
Review: This bookmade me look at the behavior we all have in common.We hide the truth from others but more so we hide the truth from ourselves. Charles Ashworth the main charactor's journey of truth enthralled me I could'nt put the book down.Ms. Howatches charactors are vivid and human.I wait with great anticipation for each new book in this series.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting character study
Review: 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.