Glamorous Powers by Susan Howatch

Glamorous Powers published 1988 is book two in Susan Howatch's acclaimed Starbridge series of novels.  These six books are set in the UK in and around the fictional town of Starbridge.  The subject matter is the Church of England in the twentieth century and each book centers on a different Anglican priest.  These priests have come to a crisis point in their lives and the drama is why?  What happened in their past to bring them to this point?

And so when Glamorous Powers begins it is 1940.  Father Jon Darrow who narrates the book is an Anglican-Catholic priest and monk.  He entered the monastic life in 1923 in response to a vision.  Darrow has psychic powers.  His visions torment him because he can never be sure if they are sent by God or the Devil and now seventeen years later another vision is telling him to leave the monastery and reenter the world.

Prior to becoming a monk, Father Darrow had an active life.   He married young and had two children, Ruth and Martin.  He became a chaplain in the navy spending more and more time away from home.  He was at sea when his wife Betty died and his children didn't see much of him growing up.  As Darrow tells us he was not cut out for family life:

" I had no idea that the daily routine of marriage would be so hostile to sustain a rich inner life.  Nothing had prepared me for such chaos ...  Betty was seldom still.  She was always rushing hither and thither, continually invading my psychic space, laughing, crying, endlessly chattering .... And then the children came.  Of course I was pleased and proud, but the noise, the mess, the constant destruction of any interlude which encompassed peace and order"

But now Father Darrow is heading back into the world and so we follow him as he remarries less than six months after leaving the monastery.  We follow his attempts to reconnect with his grown children and as he tries to fit in as the new pastor at the parish in Starbridge.  Problems occur because Darrow's Anglo-Catholicism is not appreciated by his parishoners who want nothing to do with "Romish practices".  So he's got alot on his plate.

Glamorous Powers is the second book in Howatch's Starbridge series.  The first novel Glittering Images centered around Rev. Charles Ashworth a young man who suffered a bit of a breakdown.  Father John Darrow played a somewhat minor role in the first novel as the man Ashworth comes to for spiritual counselling.  And in the first book I was quite taken with Darrow, a strong, charasmatic, compassionate man whose life we know very little about.  Glamorous Powers is the novel where we find out everything we ever wanted to know about him and, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

I ended up preferring Rev Charles Ashworth in Glittering Images to Father Jon Darrow in Glamorous Powers.  I had empathy for Ashworth who had suffered a real tragedy in his life seven years prior in comparison to the trials and tribulations of Father Darrow which in many cases are of his own making, particularly  the problems with his grown children.  But though Darrow can be annoying and rather selfish, he is not boring.  Susan Howatch is a master at creating intriguing, complex characters and so in a few months I am eager to begin book three in the series, Ultimate Prizes, where it is now the late 1940's and our next cleric, the Archdeacon Nevill Aysgarth, is having his own issues to contend with.