Consider the Lilies

London: Michael Joseph, 1968. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Near Fine. 12mo. Orange paper boards. 256 pp. Dust jacket lightly bumped and foxed (to reverse) to extremities. About fine overall. Waugh's fourth novel traces the frustrations of Anglican clergymen and their anxieties in the secular age, and traces their frustrations and disappointments with lively compassion which readers of his earlier works will have come to expect. Its hero is an articulate, engaging young clergyman burdened with a wife, Gillian, whom he has learnt to endure; she is an atheist of the old-fashioned, dogmatic variety, quite out of tune with the cautious agnosticism of modern theology. The bulk of the book is taken up with Nicholas's attempts to dispose of her inside the Christian precept: "Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive officiously to keep alive." This would enable him to pursue his passionate and much more meaningful affair with Danae, the daughter of the millionaire patron of his living. Before long the terrible strain of under-work proves too much for him, as it does for several of his colleagues. Through suffering he eventually finds his way back to sanity and his own form of saintliness as a useful member of society--in hell.