The Wonder Worker
Howatch, Susan
ANGLICAN ANGST Paul Elie i t's Kleenex time again at the Rectory." So says the retired-exorcist-in-residence at Saint Benet's. No need to worry, though. A spiritual director is on call...
...In the sixties, Nicholas was a "wonderworker" who used his gifts as a hypnotist and psychic to amuse the smart set at Oxford and beguile dangerous young ladies...
...Howatch is a moralist, and this episode-and the seventy-times-seven calamities that follow--is constructed so that she can make distinctions, deliver sermonettes, and argue her case for the Commonweal 2 5 March 27, 1998 relevance of religion to contemporary life...
...She is transfixed by Nicholas, who is radiant in the pulpit...
...The novel turns on the distinction between the "wonderworker," who uses psychic gifts to manipulate others to his own ends, and the Christian healer, who selflessly "offer[sI these powers to God and so ensure[s] they were always used for the good...
...As a result, The Wonder Worker has more religion in it than a dozen books of theology, and it is conveyed to the reader in a way that feels like life--not through symbolism or metaphor, but blended with pop psychology, banter, and the ceaseless white noise of the mind as a way her people deal with what life throws at them...
...It is between living one's life according to a theory and taking life as it comes...
...Now he has a ministry of healing modeled on that of "Jesus Christ, the greatest healer who ever lived...
...The healing center is thronged with specialists, each ~ith a theory...
...So are a parish priest, a curate, a doctor, several befrienders, and a cook with a Cordon Bleu certificate...
...For further information or to request an application, please contact: Rev...
...Whereas the action of the Starbridge series was concluded in 1965, The Wonder Worker is set in 1988 and deals with alternative healing and "the interrace between the medical and the spiritual...
...Much more probable is the theory that the devil could be infiltrating the rectory by riding on a mental disorder which was already present in her ." When the characters speak that way (and the}, always do), we are meant to ask: Are these people searching modem believers, or "power-junkies hooked on deliverance, crisis-addicts mainlining on salvation...
...Stacy, his curate, may be gay...
...Like popular psychology, or the rhetoric of Christian healing, melodrama is a useful but limited device, and in the end it obscures the clear sight of things as they are...
...Alice comes to this Wonderland as an emissary of common sense...
...A Master's degree is preferred...
...Starting salary for this nine-month position in 1997-98 was $25, 035, plus benefits...
...Not long after, Alice moves in as the new cook at the healing center and begins to be healed of her eating disorder and her low self-esteem...
...For this reader, then, the real conflict in The Wonder Worker is the conflict between the contrivances of melodrama and the workings of realistic fiction...
...A spiritual director is on call round the clock...
...And his wife wants to end their marriage...
...Not long after, the aunt dies with dignity...
...But the reader stays skeptical, because too much of what happens in the novel is ridiculous or unbelievable...
...With her last book, Absolute Truths, she wrapped up what she called the Starbridge series, "six novels about the Church of England in the twentieth century...
...It becomes clear that the real conflict in the novel is not between healing and wonderworking, or between Christianity and UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME Residence Hall Rector The University of Notre Dame is a Catholic university founded by the Congregation of Holy Cross...
...This position is held by priests, male and female religious, and commiLted lay people...
...Approximately 6,550 of the 7,600 undergraduates live in 27 single-sex residence halls on campus...
...For twenty years, he has been the John the Baptist to a magnetic younger priest named Nicholas Darrow...
...Alice is in love with him and is shedding pounds rapidly...
...Susan Howatch creates vivid characters and has a keen sense for the way religion shakes out in their lives...
...Father Lewis earnestly prays for Alice to be delivered of her disordered love for rum-raisin ice cream...
...Starting salary for the 1998-99 academic year is pending final budget approval...
...The Rector is the principal person in charge of an undergraduate residence hall...
...Furnished living quarters within the residence hall are provided...
...A volunteer befriender named Francie smears a dagger with chopped liver and hides it in her purse to convince the others that she is a murderess...
...Within its undergraduate residence halls, the University strives to create communities of faith and learning that serve as catalysts for the integration of students' intellectual, spiritual, and social development...
...Not long after that--this is a melodrama--Nicholas's life falls apart...
...Not long after, he hypnotizes the aunt, enabling the woman to make peace with Alice...
...There is also a running debate between the language of religious tradition and that of popular psychology...
...One wishes that when she ended the Starbridge series, Howatch had also stopped writing melodramas, so that she might have brought her religious sense into a fully convincing and contemporary piece of fiction...
...Nicholas's solution to his marital problems is to hypnotize his wife and then seduce her, a "spiritual rape...
...Together with a graduate student Assistant Rector and undergraduate Seniors serving as Resident Assistants, the Rector educates, counsels and consoles, accompanies students in the life of faith, and calls students to accountability in accordance with University behavioral expectations...
...Assistant Vice-President for Student Services 202 Hurley Building University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 (219) 631-5550 psychology...
...She is also meant to be a surrogate for the reader, surrendering her initial skepticism about the ministry of healing--and religion generally--as she is drawn into life at the rectory...
...Commonweal 2 6 March27,1998...
...One day, a "fat plain girl" named Alice wanders into the parish's weekly healing service to seek help for a dying aunt...
...Absolute Truttts had a plot line about an ex-exorcist who wished to establish a "center of Chris~an healing" in Starbridge...
...The University currently has positions open for Rectors in men's and women's residence halls...
...Experts abound...
...The Rector also acts as liaison to the Housing Office and other University Departments responsible for the physical condition of the residence hall...
...The position of Rector is a full-time, live-in position, although some Rectors hold part-time teaching positions or part-time administrative assignments...
...This is a rectory in a Susan Howatch novel...
...I decide that it's unlikely that Francie is, in the classical sense, possessed," Father Lewis offers at one point...
...In the new novel this fellow, Father Lewds Hall, is in residence in a thriving healing center at an Anglican parish in London...
...She is an English empiricist in a bed-sit, one who names her cat James and gets her best ideas while doing the dishes...
...may be suicidal...
...Peter D. Rocca, C.S.C...
...may be HIV-positive...
...Lewis has fallen for a society dame...
...And again and again their theories lead them to jump to conclusions and make diagnoses before the symptoms are confirmed...
...Unfortunately, Howatch persists in telling her stories in the rickety, ritualized form of melodrama...
...Paul Elie is a frequent Commonweal contributor...
...For Howatch, that is the question...
...Howatch, an Englishwoman who has written seventeen novels, is a past master of the ensemble-cast drama...
Vol. 125 • March 1998 • No. 6
