THE CROSSING POINT

by Gerda Charles ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1961

Leo Norberg, rabbi of a suburban London synagogue, is a youngish man of wit, humanity and learning. He is also a lonely man anxious to marry, yet aware that he is conditioning this by looking for the sort of wife he is not apt to find in the milieu in which he lives. When Leo finally finds Sarah Gabriel, he rejects her because of her family background (a fanatic, egotistical father) and because he needs social approval. Yet when he becomes engaged to Lilli, a smart, attractive, efficient woman, he knows that he has betrayed himself and made an irrevocable mistake. Sympathetic and interesting as Leo is, it is the picture of London middle-class Jewry that provides the real eye opener. And, paradoxically, because these people and their way of life are hardly novel, but exactly like their American counterparts of thirty-five or forty years ago (the time lag of a country that is only beginning to experience the upward social mobility so typical of America), this unwittingly gives the novel an old- fashioned air reinforced by the author's solid, almost nineteenth century, style.

Pub Date: May 15, 1961

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1961

Categories: FICTION