Glittering Images

With five best-selling British family sagas to her credit, Howatch has turned to something different: an exploration of the private lives of England's high churchmen, spun from the journals of a clergyman who served as the Bishop of Hereford in the 1920's. The result: a diverting and articulate novel in which a young doctor of theology nearly loses his soul and his religious calling probing behind the doors of a bishopric palace. Church politics set the plot in motion, when young Dr. Charles Ashworth is commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury to investigate the household of the fiery Bishop of Starbridge, an outspoken critic of the Church's divorce policy. Ashworth is uncomfortable with his role as "archepiscopal spy," but warms to it when he meets the charismatic Starbridge, his dizzy wife, and her attractive but frigid companion, Miss Lyle Christie - who thaws ever so slightly when the young cleric fails desperately, precipitously in love with her. However, after interviewing various guests in the palace, Ashworth leaps to the conclusion that a menage a trois exists at Starbridge, a realization that throws his own fragile emotional life into disarray; he starts hitting the sherry, and even has sex with a former love of the Bishop's - all in a futile attempt to deny his suspicions. After a disastrous, drunken confrontation with Starbridge, he seeks the help of a spiritual counselor, Jon Darrow, the head of an Anglican monastery, who leads him through a personal exorcism, back to the high road of righteousness, and finally into marriage with Miss Christie (after she's liberated from the menage). Probably too arcane for best-sellerdom, with its theology and Jamesian psychologizing, but, all in all, a strong attempt from Howatch at a serious novel, commendable for its clever design and the rich world of the Anglican clergy it reveals. (Kirkus Reviews)