Third Reading Summary: Venetia Flaxton attempts to find meaning in her life and instead finds a disastrous romance.
One of the significant complaints I have with the Starbridge series is that it is oriented primarily toward clergy healing and restoration without as much attention to the harm that clergy can often cause. Scandalous Risks is both an illustration of that complaint and an exemption to that idea. As I said with my post on Ultimate Prizes, this is part of a single story arc that starts with the earlier book and then mostly plays out to a conclusion in Scandalous Risks, but has threads that continue into Mystical Paths, Absolute Truths, and the spinoff trilogy that starts with Wonder Worker.
In writing about the first three books, I largely stayed away from the details of the plot, but this is a book I think I have to write about the plot. If you do not want to know anything about the plot, you should stop reading here.
Venetia Flaxton is the youngest daughter of Lord Flaxton, one of the local aristocrats in the Starbridge disease. Lord Flaxton is an atheist, but he strongly supports the Church of England as a cultural institution for its support of English culture. He is also one of Stephen Aysgarth’s closest friends, the Ultimate Prizes’ main character. Stephen is old enough to be Venetia’s father. He first meets her when Venetia is nine and Stephen is the Archdeacon of Starbridge. At the point of their meeting, Stephen is a widower with five children.
The book is framed as Venetia retelling the story from 1988, but the story she is telling is of 1963 when she was 23, unmarried, and without direction. Stephen is six years into being the Dean (head pastor) of the Starbridge Cathedral. The story is told as a type of romantic tragedy. It is clear from the start that Venetia and Stephen will eventually have a covert affair and that it will destroy Venetia and harm Stephen.
All the series’ books have a theoretical thread and usually a specific book or author that runs through the book. In this case, it is Honest to God by Bishop John Robinson. That book criticizes traditional Christian theology and introduces moral and ethical relativism to a popular English-speaking audience. Aysgarth, as the series’ liberal character, is all for Honest to God. As they move closer toward an affair, Stephen attempts to justify it using the “Love Ethic” of Honest to God to make the affair more palatable. Stephen and Venetia are attracted to one another. Still, as the story plays out, they are attracted not just to each other as individuals but because the other can fulfill a need within themselves. Stephen does not know of the sexual relationship between his mentor, Alex Jardine, and Lyle Christie (she eventually marries Charles Ashworth at the end of the first book). There is a parallelism in this Venetia and Stephen’s relationship that carries out as Lyle attempts to mentor Venetia.
Part of my frustration with the character of Stephen, as presented in the series, is that it is the liberals that attempt to justify their illicit affairs theologically. In contrast, the other characters tend to have short-term affairs. All affairs are problematic for clergy and their roles as clergy. Still, as much as Howatch attempts to illustrate the three-part thread of the Church of England (low church, broad church, Anglo-Catholic or conservative, liberal and mystical, depending on your frame), I think Howatch fails to keep those threads running evenly.
As a reader, Venetia is harmed more than almost any other main character in the series. And it isn’t just short-term harm, but a level of harm that runs through decades of the series. In my mind, one of the issues is historical. In the book, if she had been born about three decades later, she may have been called to ordination. There is certainly a hint in that direction. (Women were first ordained in 1994 in the Church of England.) As with the other books, this book helps to set up both the fifth and sixth book because Nick, in book five, continues to tell the story as he becomes Venetia’s “Talisman,” and Lyle’s attempt to help Venetia leads her to a prayer ministry that is a center of the story of book six.
I want to affirm the orientation toward grace in the series. Howatch illustrates how we are all imperfect and how God can redeem our imperfections. But I think it sometimes goes too far and minimizes harm, especially to women. There are places where the series identifies that God is not the cause of sin and doesn’t condone or desire people to do evil. But there are also times when that seems to be less clear. In Mystical Paths, toward the end of the book, there is this dialogue:
“You’ll be a much better priest now than you would have been if all this hadn’t happened. You’ll be a real priest, not a replica-priest, a man experienced in horror and suffering, not a mere boy who’s spent his life wrapped in cotton wool.”
“So you’re saying that out of all that tragedy and death—”
“—will come life and truth. Your life, Nicholas, and your truth. And in your life and in your truth, Christian’s tragedy will be redeemed.”
Nicholas is lamenting his behavior, and in some ways, the affirmation of God redeeming everything can be read as specifically allowing sin. Contextually, Nicholas is being told not to wallow in guilt, which is important. But there is some balance where guilt is appropriately acknowledged, and there is an attempt to make things right, even if not all things can be made right.
Scandalous Risks by Susan Howatch (Starbridge #4) Paperback (seems to be out of print), Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook