The Climate of Belief  by Jennifer Lash
Gollancz, 16s.
 

            Miss Lash, we are told, is only 22, and her novel, too, is about a community of men -- this time English Benedictines of a higher social cast than Mr. Powers Clementines*.  She really knows an astonishing amount of the inner affairs of a montastary and her Dom Lucius, who believes but cannot love, dominates this story of what vocation means.  Set in the         pre-ordained orderliness of her abbey, the pattern is of failure:  of a novice in finding his vocation, the much further failure of Dom Lucius to penetrate behind the cover of his intelligence, and the failure of Bella to find the love she seeks in the monk's response.  Miss Lash has a serious intelligence and is at home in the climate of her title!

                                      -------------Peregrine Walker

*  Miss Lash's book was reviewed in conjunction with J. F. Powers book,
"Morte d'Urban," Gollancz.  21s.  The Clementines are another male religious order.