| In Glittering Images Susan Howatch unvciled the ele- gant, complcx, dcceptivc world bchmd the dazzling facadc of a great English cathedral...in ; ~ amorous Powers she told the remarkable story of a clergyman whose psychic powcrs werc both a magnificent gift anti a dangerous affliction.., and now, with Ultimate Prizes, she gives us the third and most enthrall- ing book yct in her extraordinary new sequence of novels. The narrator is Neville Aysgarth: witty, intelli- gent, powcrfully ambitious. Drivcn by mcmories of his impoverished childhood, a drive tcmpercd by his ardcnt faith, he has learned to seek worldly suc- cess inits more subtle forms. And, by his forty-first year--as the novel opens, in 1942 --he has captured many of life s prizes: the "perfect" wile, the "per- fect" family and the "perfect" future in his beloved Chnrch of England. Already an archdeacon (a rank usually held by mcn ten or twenty years his senior) and privilegcd aide to the Bishop of Starbridgc, Aysgarth is sure to attain a great place in the Church s hicrarchy. But he has not anticipatcd thc effect on his picture-pcrfect world of a woman like Dido Tallent. This former dcb of the year, this darling of the soci- ety gossip columists, movcs into his ficld of vision as a fellow gucst at one of the Bishop s wartime din- nor parties. Dresscd in her simple Navy uniform, she nonethcless appears to Aysgarth "a diamond, glittering wickedly among a prim collection of pearls) When she asks him to bccomc her spiritual adviscr, he constructs a masterfully rational reason why hc should agrce ("Who was I to regard her with such un-Christian cynicism because she had spcnt too many ycars as a mindlcss society girl?...Jesus would ncver have walked past her with his nose in the air, and since I was onc of his followers neither should 1"). But it only masks his true motive: Dido, "so clevcr, so stimulating, so attractive, so rich, so |
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