Summary: A working-class boy becomes a high-powered clergyman, but a tragedy brings about a crisis.
There are three main reoccurring characters in the Starbridge series, Charles Ashworth (the conservative neo-orthodox), Jon Darrow (the mystical anglo-Catholic), and Stephen (Nevill) Aysgarth (the liberal modernist). Ultimate Prizes is the book where Neville, who is renamed in the book to Stephen) is the narrator.
I never really liked Stephen. His pugnacious personality, which Howatch tries to make a positive feature, annoys me. And while I am not an Anglo-Catholic nor a Neo-Orthodox leaning Christian, Aysgarth’s style of liberalism turns me off even more. Part of the problem is that as much as Aysgarth is shown to have real faith and pastoral skills, and no one in the series is portrayed as perfect, Aysgarth responds the least to spiritual direction and his crises.
In the first two books, Charles and Jon are far from perfect, but the changes they make due to their problems make them better at fulfilling their calling. While Stephen seems to get patched up enough to keep going, but just a few years later has another crisis, and then another, and another. In the last book of the series, which I am reading now, Charles, who eventually becomes a bishop, grapples with whether or not he should have worked to end Stephen’s career in the church because he keeps having problems. That last book is, in part, about the role of grace in the Christian life. But I think the series as a whole makes the case that there are reasons that clergy should be defrocked.
I am not going to give away the details, but in Ultimate Prizes, what is a significant crisis in his life moves toward a later, even more significant crisis in part because Stephen continues to drink heavily and take “Scanalous Risks” because his personality is oriented toward working for “Ultimate Prizes.”
More than any other book, Ultimate Prizes is part one of a story arc that includes Scandalous Risks. Reading through this series again has reminded me that Howatch has relied on a couple of storytelling methods too strongly. Again, Stephen’s wife dies (for the first time this happens in the book), just like Charles and Jon’s wives died early in the two previous books. And again, the desire for sex plays a big role in seeking a new wife. And again, parent issues play a developmental role that is part of how sin plays out in Aysgarth’s life.
Theology, personality, parents, and class all work together positively and negatively in orienting a person to sin and gifting. And like Richard Rohr’s basic approach in Why Be Catholic, strengths are almost always weaknesses from another facet.
As I have tried to express earlier, I am sentimental about the series because it has so impacted me in turning me to spiritual direction as a concept. There are real issues with the series, but as I am in the midst of reading the last book as I am writing this, I am reminded of how the imperfections of the series are at least somewhat planned because human life is imperfect. God can redeem brokenness to become more beautiful than we can imagine.
Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch (Starbridge #3) Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition