The Company of Heaven

Catherine Fox

Description

Return to Lindchester once more with The Company of Heaven, the fifth in the beloved series of Lindchester Chronicles novels by Catherine Fox. Entertaining and packed with well-loved characters, The Company of Heaven is perfect for fans of Anthony Trollope's Barchester Chronicles, Barbara Pym and BBC's Rev.
2020 and sadly the Tales from Lindford came to an end, but the pandemic did not, and neither did the lives of our valiant Lindchester community. Return to Lindchester once more with The Company of Heaven, the fifth in the beloved series of novels from Catherine Fox.

Valiantly written in real time in the midst of the pandemic, this entertaining book captures the difficulties of 2021 with heart, humour and insight. Perfect for Lindchester fans, it's also the ideal novel for anyone seeking comfort and a way of understanding all that has happened.

In The Company of Heaven, we re-join our Lindchester friends on Easter Monday 2021, just as the third lockdown in our Covid winter of discontent draws to a close. The new paschal candles have been lit. The endless snowy ghastliness of January, February, and March are behind us now.

Shake out your wings and fly once more across the Diocese of Lindfordshire, as we launch out on Pandemic, Part II. We will catch up with old friends and make new ones. Skeletons will tumble from cupboards, and not everyone will behave themselves as well as they ought (this is Lindchester after all).

A twenty-first century Barchester that fans of Barbara Pym and the BBC's Rev will love, this new volume in the Lindchester Chronicles is contemporary Christian fiction at its finest. Sharp-eyed, witty and compassionate, Catherine Fox once again helps us make sense of real-life events and challenges, while weaving through a series of heart-stopping storylines. The Company of Heaven will make you laugh, cry and leave you with hope that grace can be found even in the darkest times.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Romance contemporaine
• Fiction
• Romance
• Christian
• Contemporary
• Contemporary history
• Religious

Informations

• Publié par: SPCK
• Date de parution: 18 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781910674680
• Langue: English

Extrait

‘Wise and funny . . . Catherine Fox knows that daily life is never trivial. Her characters’ big experiences take place in the ordinary world of COVID, cake and kindness, but – like our own – they are no less significant for that.’
Gillian Cross , winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children’s Book Award
‘By innovatively laying her characters onto real-time, month-by-month events, Catherine Fox reminds us of the vital narratives of our own lives, and asks us to pay attention to the human stories that pulse beneath the headlines.’
Andrew McMillan , poet and Professor of Contemporary Writing, Manchester Writing School
Also by Catherine Fox (all published by Marylebone House)
The Lindchester Chronicles
Acts and Omissions
Unseen Things Above
Realms of Glory
Tales from Lindford
Angels and Men
The Benefits of Passion
Love for the Lost
‘Catherine Fox’s glorious Lindchester series is the twenty-first-century answer to Trollope’s Barchester – but Trollope was never so funny, so fundamentally kind or so mischievously attentive to grace.’
Francis Spufford , author of Golden Hill and Light Perpetual
‘These books are utterly unputdownable, gossipy, subtle and wise. What’s astonishing is that, despite Catherine Fox’s sharp awareness of the feet of clay under surplices, she somehow makes you believe several cheering things that most modern fiction doesn’t: that the natural world is endlessly beautiful, that most people aspire to goodness even if they fall flat on their faces and that the attempt to live a good life is worthwhile.’
Maggie Gee , novelist and Professor of Creative Writing, Bath Spa
University
‘Unsure what to buy the Trollope devotee in your life for Christmas? Look no further than Catherine Fox’s Acts and Omissions and Unseen Things Above for a refresher course not only in cathedral politics but also a set of profound, although lightly drawn, insights into the contemporary Anglican Communion.’
Janet Beer , Times Higher Education
Angels and Men
‘As original as its abrasive but engaging heroine.’
Pat Barker in the Sunday Times Pick of the Year
The Benefits of Passion
‘Fox . . . writes this provocative and witty story as if she were on springs, her exuberant style happily combining with religious argument . . . thoroughly enjoyable.’
Good Housekeeping
Love for the Lost
‘Catherine Fox is brilliantly skilled as a novelist.’
Penelope Fitzgerald
Catherine Fox is an established and popular author. Her debut novel, Angels and Men (reissued in 2014), was a Sunday Times Pick of the Year. Her other books include The Benefits of Passion and Love for the Lost (reissued in 2015), Acts and Omissions , which was chosen as a Book of 2014 by The Guardian , and its sequels, Unseen Things Above (2015) and Realms of Glory (2017). Catherine lectures at Manchester Metropolitan University.

For the Steel City Choristers
Contents

Dramatis personae
Prologue
The Company of Heaven
BONUS MATERIAL
Changes and chances: A Lindchester story for Christmas 2018
One more river: A Lindchester story for Easter 2019
One thousand Christmas lights: A Lindchester story set in December 2019
Dramatis personae

Bishops
Steve Pennington
Bishop of Lindchester
Matt Tyler
Bishop of Barcup
Priests and deacons
Cathedral clergy
Marion Randall
Dean of Lindchester (the boss)
Giles Littlechild
Cathedral Canon Precentor (music & worship)
Lindchester clergy
Martin Rogers
Borough (and Churches) Liaison Officer
Dominic Todd
Rector of Lindford Parish Church
Wendy Styles
‘Father Wendy’, Vicar of Carding-le-Willow, Cardingforth
Virginia Coleman
‘Mother Gin’, Diocesan Officer for Social Justice, Associate Priest at Lindford Parish Church
Ed Bailey
Rector of Gayden Parva, Gayden Magna, Itchington Eposcopi, etc.
People
Gene
Husband of the dean
Freddie Hardman-May
Tenor, Lay Vicar of Gayden Parva
Ambrose Hardman-May
Alto, Lay Vicar of Gayden Magna
Ellis Gray
Owner of Gray’s reclamation yard
Paver
Artist, Ellis’s cousin
Dr Jane Rossiter
Lecturer at Linden University, married to Matt
Kat
Bishop Steve’s EA
Neil Ferguson
Father Ed’s partner
Andrew Jacks
Director of the Dorian Singers
Becky Rogers
Ex-wife of Martin, mother of Leah and Jessica
Leah Rogers
Older daughter
Jessica Rogers
Younger daughter
Chloe Garner
Street pastor, lawyer, lay member of General Synod, cousin of Ambrose
Madge Williams
Retired midwife, parish nurse
Miss Clarabelle Sherratt
Retired nurse, philanthropist, heir to the Sherratt fortune
Jack
Lives in Miss Sherratt’s summerhouse
Carrie Logan
Wedding planner
All Creatures Great and Small
Cosmo
Chloe’s labradoodle
Pedro
Father Wendy’s rescue greyhound
Lady
Father Dominic’s golden labradoodle
Bear
Neil and Ed’s golden labradoodle
Alfie
Ambrose and Freddie’s golden labradoodle
Andy and Theo
Alpacas
Prologue

ach time I finish blogging a volume of the Lindchester Chronicles, I vow it will be the last. But here we are again, dear reader, about to set off on a new adventure. ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit,’ says the proverb writer, ‘so a fool returneth to his folly.’
I’ve never had a dog, but I’m guessing most owners haul the dog away and swiftly clear up the mess to prevent any canine foolishness. We must not collapse the distinction between vomiting and regurgitation, however. Regurgitation is a natural and wholesome process in the animal kingdom. We have much to learn from the ordering of the natural world. It behoves us to remain humble, and recall that God does not make mistakes.
If we are going to argue from nature, we cannot do better than contemplate emperor penguins. Everyone loves emperor penguins, with their monogamous heterosexual lifestyle, so unlike those gay zoo penguins that one reads about. The male emperor penguin incubates the egg, while the female goes off foraging for food. This may at first sight look like a troublesome example of gender role reversal, but we would do well to remember that if an activity is undertaken by the male of the species, it is de facto more arduous and perilous. The mother penguin returns from two months at sea with a belly full of fish, which she regurgitates for her newly hatched chick to eat. Such a normal and beautiful thing! I imagine mothers reading this find themselves wishing they could do the same for their own children. Images arise unbidden of foraging through the aisles of Sainsbury’s, cramming their maw with doughnuts, before returning home to their clamouring brood.
We will leave the Antarctic wastes and bring things closer to home by wandering through the fields of Lindfordshire. What could be more soothing than the pastoral image of Daisy placidly chewing her cud? As you may recall from school Biology lessons, this is really Daisy regurgitating a bolus of food into her mouth, which she re-chews and re-swallows. Cows have a quite terrifying number of stomachs and digestive enzymes, the details of which need not detain us here. I will skip nimbly from cows to dogs, and conjure a picture of a golden labradoodle (let us call him Bear) retching behind the sofa – and thence to the proverb writer. ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit.’ Vomiting in dogs is caused by ‘dietary indiscretion’ (in Bear’s case, rotting badger). Bad boy! Leave! I would argue that a dog returning to its regurgitation is less problematic, as this is probably just hastily gobbled food that never made it as far as the stomach. Not being picky eaters, dogs are fine with that idea. Hey, most of it still smells like food, and besides, they haven’t finished with it yet.
All this is by way of an apologia. Revisiting Lindchester may look like folly. I daresay ( caveat lector ) there will be parts of this narrative that leave you grimacing with disgust. But I keep going back because there’s stuff there I haven’t finished with yet. Interestingly, if you read the next proverb in the Bible, it’s this: ‘Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.’ The hope of this fool is that she knows she’s a fool. She may yet listen, change her mind and amend her ways. The man wise in his own conceit is beyond the reach of hope. Armoured in the tower of his conviction, he will defend to the last any assaults on his rectitude.
It is not the business of this narrative to make the reader relive the first quarter of 2021. Let other laptops dwell on Capitol riots, inaugurations and impeachments. We will rejoin our Lindchester friends on Easter Monday, just as the third lockdown in our COVID winter of discontent draws to a close. The new paschal candles have been lit. The endless snowy ghastliness of January, February and March is behind us now. We trudged for three months on short rations of hope, with nothing to look forward to. Or so it felt. You’d think our spirits would have risen with every day that passed, every extra minute of daylight, every dose of vaccine administered. For once, the government’s flightpath out of lockdown is holding firm. ‘Flightpath’ is not the right word. The right word has vanished, like a picture from a wall. We stare gormlessly at the space where it ought to be. Oh well. We’ll have to make do with flightpath, until the correct word reappears later on when we no longer need it. COVID brain fuzz. It’s as though some well-meaning buffoon has been tidying up our mental desk and misfiling half our vocabulary.
It feels as if this whole year hasn’t really happened. How can we still be here, twelve months on from the first lockdown when it was all Zoom and Zumba, and weirdly exciting? Surely we drove a stake through the heart of 2020, so it could never come back? We stood by our windows at midnight on New Year’s Eve as fireworks flickered in the clouds like sheet lightning. Near and far we watched as red stars, green sprinkles and white flowers crackled across Lindfordshire, declaring it was finally over. How can it still b