The Wonder Worker

Rating:
Summary: Flawed but fascinating
Review: I wanted to like this book. I'm an Anglican and an anglophile. It was my first Susan Howatch novel. I knew people who liked it. It was imaginative of the author to write in the voices of four different characters. But! The plot was illogical at times. Most of the characters acted as if they needed emergency psychotherapy a lot more than they needed spiritual direction. The psychological lingo was anachronistic (what professional could diagnose "an acute psychotic episode resulting from a nervous breakdown" with a straight face any more?). The only character who made consistent sense was Sister Clare Veronica, Nicholas's spiritual director. Even in the face of all that, though, the book had its strange appeal. After finishing it, I immediately tacked two of the Starbridge novels to see what they were like.

Rating:
Summary: Nick Darrow Is Back!
Review: Nick Darrow, the psychic Anglican priest, was one of my favorite characters in the 6 novel Starbridge series so I was very glad to see Susan Howatch reprise him in his 40s in this novel. He was much younger in "Mystical Paths," which took place before his ordination. Howatch told the Starbridge stories with one narrator in first person for each of the Starbridge novels. With this one, she returns to a device she used in her "Cashelmara" and "Penmarric" days of having alternating characters tell the story in first person. Nick has a ministry of healing and deliverance using his psychic powers. Lewis Hall, his former spiritual director, now lives and works with him. The danger for Nick is in the temptation to become a Wonder Worker. This is where he becomes a charismatic Christian healer who works in pursuit of his own fame and glory rather than God's. This book also has more of a love story develop within it than some of the other Starbridge novels did and you see it develop from the main characters' points of view. Venetia reappears from the Starbridge series also and takes up with Lewis Hall. These characters all reappear in the novel which came after this one, "The High Flier," but they are no longer the leads in that novel.

Rating:
Summary: A Tedious Installment in a Fascinating Series
Review: The literary problem with this novel, which so many readers find so riveting, is its construction. The book is broken into five parts narrated by four different interconnected persons. While it is interesting to view events as through a prism, this technique wears thin in page after page of rambling prose. This novel would have been much stronger if it had been edited down. Much too much verbiage! Much too much wandering over the same territory! At one point I wondered why I kept plodding on. The answer is, you get hooked on these characters due to this surplice-ripping series as a whole. Despite several melodramatic moments, nothing much happens in this novel-- it could have been condensed into a fine short story. For a budding Howatch fan, I recommend "Glittering Images" or particularly the incredible potboiler "The High Flyer" over this book any day.

Rating:
Summary: Another compelling story of spitiual struggle and intrigue
Review: The Wonder Worker, by Susan Howatch, is another in her series about spiritual struggles within the Anglican clergy. It is not technically a "Starbridge" novel, because it takes place in London, but it does include many of the same group of characters, with a few additions. Nicholas Darrow, a psychic priest, faces a moral dilemma involving pride and the misuse of his gifts. Caught up in his healing ministry, he flounders, blunders, then regains his spiritual equilibrium with the help of an irascible colleague and a formidable Roman Catholic nun. The plot is similar, in respect to the spiritual path of the protagonist, to the others in the Starbridge series. The reader need not have read the others in the Starbridge series to enjoy the latest work. However, readers will want to explore the previous Starbridge novels after reading The Wonder Worker. Spiced with intrigue and a particularly nasty bout with demons, the novel entertains and engages as it leads to the surprising denouement.