A SINGLE LIGHT

by Maia Wojciechowska ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 1968

A deaf-and-dumb girl whom the world has rejected, a pedant and a priest who have, each in his own way, rejected the world, are brought together by a marble statue of the Christ Child concealed in a remote Spanish church. The girl finds it first and cherishes it in place of the infant she had taken care of and lost, gives it the love she never had; the self-absorbed American scholar seeks and preempts it as the consummation of his life's work, and talks of it to the villagers as a tourist attraction; the priest, realizing that he is alienated from his people, attempts to secure their regard at the likely cost of the girl's life--for she has taken the Child from its glass case and they, enraged, are determined to get it back and wreak revenge. The particular anguish of each, and his transformation, is explicated at length, as is the disaffection of the villagers, a spiritual impoverishment that seems to correspond to their physical poverty. Roughly the first half is the girl's story, and it has the undeniable heart-tug of a Jane Wyman movie at a more measured pace. With the advent of Larry Katchen, the American, the somber absorption is blasted into facetious fragments; although he has a chance to recover his humanity, the book never recovers even a sympathetic conviction. It becomes a crypto-parable that masticates love and morality into pulp.

Pub Date: April 10, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION