THE PRISM.  By Jennifer Lash.  Garden City:  Doubleday, 1963. Pp. 193. $3.95.
 
 

          A sensitive novel that discovers the deep feelings of a priest and his weakness without having him fall into the baseness of sin.  No scandals, no public shame are presented, only the inner struggle of hearts too weak to overcome but also weak enough to be carried to safety by the daily events of life.

          The sequence of religious experiences and development is carried out notably well.  The author uses the modern device of inner dialogue with the reader which conveys an especial spiritual content to the novel.

           "Abbot Murray, man of justice, loved Lucius.  Isabella, wife of Simon, loved Lucius.  Jonathan Sargent, boy, loved Lucius.  But God, it seemed, did not love Lucius, and yet it was God that Lucius believed, and it was for His love that he longed" (p. 86).

            Each of these characters strives to show his or her love for Lucius and he himself is hungry for love, but the rays from a prism cannot intersect each other.

             Abbot Murray dies a peaceful monk's death.  Isabella is a devout wife, Jonathan commits suicide, and finally Lucius does find God's love in the hardness of the parish of Martlow.

             "Believe, 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" (p. 192).
 

                                ---------Luis Carlos Diaz, S.J.