The High Flyer: A Novel - Hardcover

Howatch, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375410570 ISBN 13: 9780375410574

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2000

Synopsis

High-powered London attorney Carter Graham's perfect life with her new husband is shattered by the revelation of her husband's secret ties to the occult and the Nazis, and an increasingly desperate Carter seeks aid from Nick Darrow, the mysterious head of St. Benet's Healing Center, as she struggles to come to terms with her own life and marriage

About this title

Review:

"When I first saw my temporary secretary it never occurred to me to flirt with him". The bemused confidence and upended assumption of this first sentence from The High Flyer, by Susan Howatch, reveal a great deal about the character who speaks it and the shape of this novel as a whole. The narrator, Carter Graham, is a successful London lawyer--a "high flyer"--whose thoroughly secular plan for a perfect life (clothes, car, kids, etc.) is proceeding quite punctually, thanks to her strong sense of entitlement and her talent for social manipulation. The story that follows, however, undermines Carter's confident assumptions regarding the inner lives of the people around her. Carter meets and marries another high flyer, a charming business titan named Kim. Slowly, Carter learns of Kim's involvement in the occult, his Nazi past and the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of his former wife. As the mysteries of Kim's past are revealed to Carter, Kim's personality undergoes a deep and demonic transformation. Carter, terrified, seeks shelter at a Christian healing centre, where a cast of clerics and lay people help Carter reconstruct a life for herself, and a theological and psychological framework that makes some sense of the blindness and betrayal that destroyed her life with Kim. "[C]reation's not about efficiency", explains one character, "it's about love. It's about shedding blood, sweat and tears to make the thing you care about come right. It's about enduring the shadow side of creation and using it so that in the end everything can be brought into the light". The novel's greatest strength is its suspenseful plotting, which calls to mind (thanks in part to the narrator's frequent allusions to) the films of Alfred Hitchcock.. --Michael Joseph Gross

Review:

A gripping two-pronged tale of psychological terror and spiritual redemption.
The New York Post
AN INTRIGUING ADVENTURE INTO THE UNEXPECTED . . . A STORY FILLED WITH UNANTICIPATED AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING TURNS.
The Denver Post

Susan Howatch may well become the Trollope of the twentieth century. . . . She is a skilled storyteller.
The Washington Post Book World

ONE OF THE MOST ORIGINAL NOVELISTS WRITING TODAY.
Cosmopolitan"

"A gripping two-pronged tale of psychological terror and spiritual redemption."
-The New York Post

"AN INTRIGUING ADVENTURE INTO THE UNEXPECTED . . . A STORY FILLED WITH UNANTICIPATED AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING TURNS."
-The Denver Post

"Susan Howatch may well become the Trollope of the twentieth century. . . . She is a skilled storyteller."
-The Washington Post Book World

"ONE OF THE MOST ORIGINAL NOVELISTS WRITING TODAY."
-Cosmopolitan

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0375410570
• ISBN 13: 9780375410574
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 500