Susan Howatch; A Noonya Books Recommended Author.
One of the best authors of modern fiction alive today, is Susan Howatch. I first came across her books when i was around 14 and i read the Sins of the Fathers. I bought this book on a roadside verandah in Kampala in war torn Uganda in the eighties, at a time when road side vendors of books in Kampala were still allowed. Road side book vending in Kampala is history since the clean up of chaotic Kampala in the recent Musisi -clean - up years. Anyway I bought this fat novel and took it home. My long suffering mother provided the money to buy me the book on the spot. She always never hesitated to buy me any book i asked for. God bless her soul and richly reward her. Anyway, when i took the book home, i could not put it down. For days on end i read and re-read it. It was a part of my accessories (together with Pride and Prejudice and How Green was my Valley).
The world of Paul Van Zale , a rich and powerful business man and how he moved from New York to the marshes of the English countryside to involve his company into the cosmetics business and ended up involved in so much more. How he met this lovely strong creative woman called Dinah. It talks about his life and the affairs of his very interesting family. (much more interesting than the Kardashians< sorry could not resist that!). The scenes Howatch described in 'Sins of the Fathers' were so clear that i could smell the air in the flatlands, see the waving grasses, the greenhouse with perfumes that Dinah was making and experimenting with and stumble with her characters upon the croaking and loud toad choruses in the marshes. How Van Zale would feel as if he was whirring into a parallel world whenever he left New York to go to England and all that followed.
Howatch's books taught me so much about life and people and its varied experiences, the difficult choices people have to make sometimes, the possible passions governing these decisions as well as the consequences, some stretching for several generations. With touches of wistful romance, passion and in her latter books, spirituality, Howatch's writing is among the very best.The old copy of the Sins of the Fathers that i had bought, had lost its last pages... For years i looked for the end of that story and not a person i met in my limited school girl circles had read that book or could tell me the end. I finally found the ending and read it years later. By then i had read many more of her other well written stories. Many books and years later, Susan Howatch continues to shine as a writer who describes and touches the very soul of human existence, albeit based in fiction. She is a great writer who has contributed a lot to the writing of great life affirming stories. Do yourself a favour, please find one of her many books ( e.g The Rich are Different, Penmarric, Cashelmara , Glittering Images) and read it.
