Consider the Lilies

First published in 1968 and chosen as Book of the Year by Books and Bookmen, Consider the Lillies has all the comic brilliance and savage irony one would expect from Britain's premier satirist.
The hero of this novel 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.