Earth and High Heaven
By
THE chief subject of this novel is religious and racial prejudice in a world torn apart by it. The second is a mature and exciting romance between Erica Drake, daughter of a socially prominent English-Canadian family in Montreal, and Marc Reiser, nativeborn Jewish lawyer, who is about to go overseas with the Army. The third pattern is the highly complicated social structure of Montreal with its three major factions of English-Canadians, French Catholics, and Jews all isolated behind the high board fences of their resentments against each other.
Except for eloquent physical descriptions of Eastern Canada, woven through passages that often achieve the grandeur of prose poetry, the city of triple social conflict might as well be Boston or Philadelphia or New York or San Francisco instead of Montreal. One needs only to change English-Canadians to American “blue bloods,” French-Canadians to Irish Catholics, and retain Jewish groups as classical outsiders, to see the universality in North America of the perpetual paradox between democratic views and intolerant behavior.
Erica Drake’s father, supposedly “liberal,” makes a more violent issue of her romance with Marc Reiser than he had made of his only son’s marriage to a FrenchCanadian Catholic. Marc Reiser’s family, with the exception of his brother, Dr. David Reiser, is none too happy at his having fallen in love with a Gentile. The two lovers never doubt their personal feelings for a moment, but are forced into meeting each other on street corners, in parks, and in restaurants. They gradually develop a morbid hysteria that mounts in tension as every generalization of stupid prejudice ever mouthed insinuates itself into their relationship.
Told with a dogged realism that yet allows scope for humor as well as compassion, the love story of Erica Drake and Marc Reiser becomes an indictment of social hypocrisy that communicates a sympathetic agony to the reader.
The two central characters are beautifully drawn. So is Dr. David Reiser. The villain of the piece, Erica Drakes father, is gradually built into a reflected figure of Freudianism, reminiscent of Mr. Barrett of Wimpole Street. Miriam Drake, Erica’s sister and champion, is overdone as a confused glamour girl of many love affairs.
Occasionally the prose style of Earth and High Heaven falls far short of rhetorical excellence; at its worst it is repetitious and preachy. But the power of the story is in the thorough realism and maturity of probing into delicate human relationships which it achieves. The preaching is generally done in the natural course of action by a character involved in it. The repetitiousness creates such an effect of “world-weariness" that it might be a deliberate and successful technique. And the uneven prose includes many passages of ripe human wisdom and singular beauty. Readers will find Earth and High Heaven so civilized it would be a pity to miss it. Lippincott, $2.50.
ISABEL CURRIER