LASH, Jennifer.  The Prism. 192 pp.  64-8141.  Doubleday.  Mar.  $3.95.

          Published by Gollancz in England under the title "The Climate of Belief," this novel by 22 year old Jennifer Lash is now available in this country under the present title.  It is primarily a study in religious faith versus practice in several people, each one of whom is sincerely concerned with living a Christian life.  Yet in each case what each achieves is dependent on his qualities and abilities as a human being.  Thus, dedicated though Lucius is to his responsibilities as a monk, he nevertheless finds himself constitutionally unable to comfort Isabella when her son is dying.  Isabella herself is a devout Catholic and devoted mother; yet while her husband is away she finds herself having to fight an overwhelming attraction to the monk.  And young Jonathan Sargent, thinking himself destined for a monk's life, finds to his dismay that he is not and ends his frustration by taking his own life.  "Such is the climate of belief, a prism held in the Creator's palm where each man, a crystal slant, varies in clarity and in capacity.  A mosaic of men refracting light from the Light from which all being is."  Miss Lash, in skillfully interweaving these several lives and more, has produced a thought-provoking novel of considerable merit.
 

         ---------Robert E. Wagenknecht, Ln., Stoneham, MA, P. L.