Susan Howatch I

Howatch is one of my favorite authors, and now that the world is in lockdown, I’m planning to read her many works over again. She was born in Surrey, near London, in 1940… Born to a middle class family, she had a comfortable and happy childhood…but her father was killed in World War Two. Her historical novels often portray the Home Front of this war. She studied law and obtained her degree in 1961. But she began to find the practical side of law boring. In 1964, she moved to the United States where she married. Since the war, Britain had been a dull narrow place and she hoped America would be a livelier, more open society. She worked as a secretary in New York, in the music business, preferring it to law. She then married Joseph Howatch, a sculptor. The couple had a daughter and Susan began to write at home, intent on writing a novel. For a few years, she wrote short Gothic novels which sold, but she wanted to write something longer and with more depth. The shorter novels were a training ground. In 1971, she published Penmarric, a long family saga, set in Cornwall. It was a rather novel idea, in that the story was loosely based on the history of the Angevin Kings, Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their sons but it was updated to 19th and 20th Century England. The story starts in the 1890s with the meeting of Janna Roslyn, a beautiful woman who rose from poverty to marry a farmer, but then lost her elderly husband. Janna's beauty attracts the wrong sort of men and alienates women. She meets the Castallack family who are the local gentry. She has had a brief affair with Laurence, the father of the family, but he dies suddenly. Her husband who was jealous, had left her the farmhouse but no money. She then embarks on a relationship with Mark, Laurence's son, who is 11 years her junior. They are passionately attracted to each other and decide to marry, but their age difference and the class conflicts cause the marriage to be difficult and unhappy. Her next work was Cashelmara, which is set in 19th century Ireland. Howatch moved to Ireland in the 1970s and lived there for a few years. She liked it there and Cashelmara was set partly in Ireland and partly in America.