The story has a philosophical element based on Boethius’ principle that life is like a spinning wheel where each person has the fate to potentially rise to success and fall to the depths of despair – completing the circle in time – sometimes repeating history where eventually the past, present, and future magically overlap. After all, there is always more than one side to any story, especially if a family feud is involved.Īt times you may think the plot is preposterous, but The Wheel of Fortune is in fact loosely based on the true life story of the Plantagenet dynasty: Edward of Woodstock and his son King Richard II, his nephew King Henry IV, and his grandson King Henry V. This is a wonderful writing technique as it allows the reader to view everything from various perspectives. Thus, just about the time you tire of hearing one characters point of view, everything shifts as another family member takes over as narrator. Typical of Susan Howatch’s novels, the story is told in segments of years by different members of the family. Unfortunately the line was usually drawn much too late… at all the wrong times, and for all the wrong reasons. As the children of each generation battle to inherit Oxmoon against the background of the Godwin family’s legendary scandals, one descendant compares his father and grand-father to Greek Tragedy, “sodomy, adultery, murder, robbery, madness and lust.” Ironically all the Godwins live in hypocrisy behind a delusional veil of decency and goodness – constantly reminding each other they are “doing the done thing”, and how important it is to “draw the line” for acceptable behavior. Even though tradition in Wales was for the oldest living son to be the heir, that seldom occurred due to death, insanity, or infertility. The Godwins were landed gentry, owning vast acreage of several adjoining farms, a village of cottages leased to the farm laborers, and the magical estate called Oxmoon.
The basic plot involves the never-ending power struggle to control the Godwin estate. Howatch writes great dialogue, presents deeply complex realistic characters, and has no difficulty holding the readers’ interest with intrigue and drama. Grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews… you will read about births, deaths, marriages, divorce, affairs and outrageous scandals. The Wheel of Fortune is a saga of epic proportions covering five generations of the Godwin family from 1913 to the late 1960’s.
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