Rating: 
Summary: Well written, emotional, spiritual...its all here!!
Review: This book by English author Susan Howatch is an engaging narrative that employs characters familiar to the reader from previous works. I did not realize there were 2 previous books until I read the afterword. It is an emotional and interesting read. The characters are vivid and well written. It is written in a he said/she said narrative that is very effective. Carta is a lawyer and church fundraiser. Gavin is a straight prostitute that specializes in gay sex. Gavin is frankly the more interesting of the two. His take-me-as- I-am approach to life is a large contrast to proper Carta. When their paths cross after the death of a mutual friend, neither of their lives will be the same. Who will be drawn into the other's world? And who will survive?I liked this book but I found it a little long and preachy in some places. Its my first Susan Howatch book and probably will not be the last but normally with a new author that I like I go back and start from the beginning and read whatever they have written. Frankly, I'm not sure I have the strength. I read all kinds of things and usually go for something way lighter after a heavy book and that is where I am headed now. This is a book that taxed me. Between the church and the lurid sex world I need something in the middle. My only real criticisms are that there are characters that disappear and I would like to know what happened to them. And there are some improbable loose ends that tie up a little too quickly and neatly at the end.
I don't think you will be sorry you read it but allow some emotional downtime for when you finish. You are going to need it.
Rating:
Summary: Faith and Love
Review: This is my first Susan Howatch in many years. It is a third book in a trilogy of novels about healing in modern London. I was powerfully moved and intend to read the first two. The first book, "The Wonder Worker" (first published in the UK as "A Question of Integrity"), is set in 1988. The second book, "The High Flyer", is set in 1990 and this book is set in 1992. It is the story of a "straight" male prostitute living in denial and a newly widowed woman who has lost her husband to a religious cult and finally to his suicide. It's difficult to imagine how these two lost souls can find each other, help each other and heal. But they do find each other and travel on a journey of love and faith. I have read this theme in several current novels and now appreciate how much this story line appeals to me. I enjoy books about characters you respect and admire, and love and faith is a welcome addition to the mix. Though the book deals with evil and a very dark and cruel world, it is worth reading because it reinforces the realization that no matter how low you think you have gone, there is hope.
Rating:
Summary: Faith and Love
Review: This is my first Susan Howatch in many years. It is a third book in a trilogy of novels about healing in modern London. I was powerfully moved and intend to read the first two. The first book, "The Wonder Worker" (first published in the UK as "A Question of Integrity"), is set in 1988. The second book, "The High Flyer", is set in 1990 and this book is set in 1992. It is the story of a "straight" male prostitute living in denial and a newly widowed woman who has lost her husband to a religious cult and finally to his suicide. It's difficult to imagine how these two lost souls can find each other, help each other and heal. But they do find each other and travel on a journey of love and faith. I have read this theme in several current novels and now appreciate how much this story line appeals to me. I enjoy books about characters you respect and admire, and love and faith is a welcome addition to the mix. Though the book deals with evil and a very dark and cruel world, it is worth reading because it reinforces the realization that no matter how low you think you have gone, there is hope.
Rating:
Summary: A Page-Turner with Enormous Substance
Review: Two short years ago, UK author Susan Howatch hit me like a ton of bricks. An innovative theology professor listed GLITTERING IMAGES --- the first in her absorbing and provocative "Starbridge" sextet about personal scandal and political turbulence in the Church of England --- as primary course reading. Yet no written or oral assignments on it were required. "Howatch will tell you more about our church and human nature than any textbook I could find," she promised, "and you'll enjoy a terrifically good read at the same time." That insightful Anglican seminary instructor was more than right; she was (dare I say it?) prophetic. Being an inter-city bus commuter, it didn't take me long to crack open that first magnificent exploration of the inner lives of vocationally religious people and escape for miles on end into Howatch's unique world of knowledge and intrigue, set in a semi-rural venue inspired by the actual environs of Salisbury Cathedral. By the time next term rolled around a few months later, I had wolfed down her five companion "Starbridge" volumes, and only the pressures of increasing coursework in other subjects kept me from continuing on to her next church-related series --- this time set amid the frantic secular intensity of central London's business district. Howatch's latest, THE HEARTBREAKER, is the third of this set, which independently carries on with the lives and loves of characters whose roots (and often, salacious secrets) are still anchored in not-so-fictional Starbridge. Right off the top, I have to award Howatch full marks in THE HEARTBREAKER for courage, factual insight and sensitivity, as she probes the tortuously complex lives of high-stakes urban sex trade professionals (the British euphemism is "leisure workers") and their ruthless managers. As with most of her novels, this story is told in the alternating first-person voices of two or more principal characters. And here, two is almost more than enough, for both Gavin (a pampered male prostitute) and sisterly Carta (who has just found Jesus and wants to help everyone) lead lives with enough convolutions to keep half-a-dozen people on the go. Among those in the vocational "helping professions" (clergy, psychologists, counselors, social workers, and the like), spiritual healing is often compared to a long journey, one that begins before the traveler is even aware of his or her own internal cries for help. Amid the changes, challenges, betrayals and well-intentioned emotional blunderings of both Gavin and Carta, Howatch offers the reader a poignant and suspenseful fly-on-the-wall overview. She convincingly describes how the dedicated (and often voluntary) specialists in real parish healing centres patiently work to draw troubled people out of their emotional and spiritual entrapment and to face traumatic lifestyle changes upon which their very survival depends. Some don't make it, and Howatch pulls no punches in bringing us to a stark realization that her models are only too prevalent in today's society. (But don't worry...THE HEARTBREAKER'S ending is typically joyous and forward-looking.) As with her previous titles, Howatch uses a vast knowledge of the Church of England (Anglican to Canadians, Episcopal to Americans) without a trace of self-indulgent pedantry or egoistic preaching. Her deeply layered characters are truly free to tell their own stories without tangential interference from an author who is so clever and passionate, she almost disappears. The HEARTBREAKER leaves no doubt that Susan Howatch continues at the top of her form. It's an express train page-turner with the rare cargo of enormous substance, and I look forward to her next offering with almost indecent eagerness. --- Reviewed by Pauline Finch
Rating:
Summary: Engaging Story
Review: You can't put this book down. The pace is a bit too fast, but some may like that more than others. You will always be reading on to find out what will happened next. Some awful things going on in the book, but Gavin needs to escape from the perils and that is the point of the engaging story. Well done Susan Howatch!
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