Susan Howatch try a Hangover Prevention Strategy
or a walk through the city of Tver
and dip into visit [Leonov * Leonoff * Leonova] Online see what I do to Get a Life
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Susan Howatch
The Wheel of Fortune Subject: Wheel of Fortune rocks! (was: Finished) Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 15:35:42 -0000 From: "Elena" Obviously some spoiler potential here for The Wheel of Fortune, but no really huge crucial nasty glaring spoilers... of course I wouldn't tell you what ***** did to ****** on the **** :) Anne wrote: > Stacy, The Wheel Of Fortune, was the best of all, I think. I agree - WoF is the *best* of the family sagas, and note this doesn't mean it's my favorite. The saga that's stayed with me more than any other is actually Sins of the Fathers. The other day, Martha referred to Devil on Lammas Night as a "harbinger of where Howatch was headed as a novelist"; I believe that's true of WoF as well. If you read or re-read it after taking in the Starbridge books, you get deja vu all over the place. Kester raves to Anna about the Christian mystics. Evan the clergyman is kind of a Lewis Hall combined with Charley Ashworth. Christianity is described at one point as "more intellectually satisfying than the occult, more positive than Buddhism, more British than Islam and less depressing than psychiatry." Without being full-on overtly Christian, the book's theme of guilt and redemption is unmistakable. Of course, in order to get to the redemption stage, people first have to screw up... and these people certainly do. WoF provides deeper, richer psychological portraits of its characters than the other sagas do - and the six narrators are very different personalities. Robert the cold ambitious rationalist, who gets terribly confused when life and emotions don't fit his black-and-white categories. Ginevra the flagrantly passionate, who's terrified of standing alone. John the divided self, brilliant and in command, yet guilt-ridden and grieving. Kester the creative escapist, in search of Beauty, Truth, Art and Peace. Harry the glittering image, the man of action with a musician's soul. Hal the truth-seeking rebel, the mirror who makes things whole. The contrast is part of the reading pleasure - each switch to a new viewpoint is like plunging into the snow after a sauna, or vice versa. WoF has the best-structured plot and the strongest characterisation of the sagas, building on the author's accumulated experience. I think Howatch really hit her stride from Rich Are Different onwards, but especially from WoF. The previous two novels used language and cultural references a lot to convey what was happening in the characters' minds; WoF keeps this up, but also gets much more psychological, producing a real psycho-thriller with a strong mystery subplot. It's that special Howatch touch, an intimate from-the-inside picture of human minds, with all their ambitions and obsessions, delights and regrets. - Obsessions! do these people ever have obsessions! And the point illustrated over and over again is that none of us lives in a vacuum, all of our actions have consequences, they affect other people and we often can't predict how. Each character's obsession or grand passion is wonderful and engrossing at the same time as it's painful or destructive for others: Howatch's skill shows us how wonderful, and how painful. And the family saga format really makes it possible to see how the unhealed hurts of one generation are passed on down the line from parents to children. That's what makes John Godwin such a pivotal figure - he's crucial in transmitting the pain of his parents and grandparents to his son and nephew and grandson. Of course, it's not poor John's fault that his father Bobby could never deal with the legacy of his youth, but that doesn't stop his son Harry from copping the consequences. And the story of Bobby, Ginevra and Robert - tragic or what? Yet there's no point at which you can point a finger at any character and say: there's the villain, it's all their fault. This is a villain-free book, you end up empathising with all of them to some extent, which gives more emotional impact to the whole tangled mess. (That's part of what puts me off Cashelmara: MacGowan is just a one-dimensional nasty. The Rich Are Different and Sins of the Fathers also have a clearly identifiable "villain", Cornelius, but at least he's fully developed and we get to see inside his head. Gotta love/hate him.) Apart from the six narrators, WoF has so many excellent supporting characters that it makes you wish it had 20 narrators and went on for many more volumes. Just the highlights of the multitude: Bronwen Morgan, John's soulmate; Bobby and Margaret Godwin, who kept trying to draw the line but never got over the crisis of their youth; the fabulously mercenary Milly Straker and her wardrobe of sex toys; the naive, loving, damaged Bella Stourham; swaggering, swearing, pig-loving Thomas Godwin, the brat who never grew up; and cool Dr. Pam, who keeps reminding me of Lyle. At this point, I should note that what makes me a Howatch addict - the core of what I like about her writing - is that technique of switching perspectives, one continuous story with multiple narrators, that she's been doing ever since Penmarric. In various Starbridge novels there are comments like "truth is multi-faceted" or "how little we know of what goes on in other people's lives". Seeing a story from alternate viewpoints makes the reader realise how true this is. It's a difficult writing technique, but by the time she wrote WoF, Howatch was damn good at it. Those six narrators complement each other perfectly. And from there she went on to an even bolder project: giving each narrator an entire book to themselves. The enjoyment of this kept me hooked throughout Starbridge, though the Church of England is far removed from my background and lifestyle. And WoF shows this style at a similarly high level. As if achieving all of the above weren't difficult enough... the plot-structuring skill behind WoF has also incorporated a fairly precise transposition of historical events. So far I've identified 39 real-life historical figures from the 14th century behind the WoF characters. (Guess which one's Chaucer.) Being a bit of a medieval history fan, I love picking out the parallels. It adds another level of enjoyment to the book. FYI, a straightforward historical novel that covers many of the same events as WoF is _Katherine_ by Anya Seton. It's told from the perspective of Katherine Swynford (1350-1403), mistress of John of Gaunt - in WoF this character is Bronwen. (I first read that book when I was 14, several years before I read WoF. And after reading about 50 reviews of Katherine on the Amazon site, I realised to my delighted horror that I'm a Katherine cliche! Most of the reviews start with: I first read Katherine when I was 13/14/15 and now it's X decades later and I still re-read it... Ditto. Two people even admit to naming their daughters Katherine.) Well, having run out of steam... and having admitted that this isn't my favorite saga... I'll restrain myself from a discussion of Sins of the Fathers! Over to other list-people for comments. Elena "Hold fast. Stand firm. Soldier on." Hey, did I get through that entire rant without mentioning Oxmoon? Sorry. Oxmoon, Oxmoon, Oxmoon. It's just a house, for God's sake! Get a life. :P
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Created by Elena in Tver, Russia. This page updated on May 5, 2001. |
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