RAGE OF THE SOUL

by Vincent Sheean ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 1952

To those who read Lead Kindly Light (1949) and shared through that Sheean's mystical experience with Gandhi in search of peace, this novel will come as something of a shock. For here he tells, in convincing terms, the story of a very troubled lady who goes to India, seeking help and understanding -- and finds it, but not through her contact with mysticism and asceticism, not through her time of contemplation in a ""clean and tidy Ashram"", not through watching others prostrate themselves before an imposing woman, the ""Feminine Principle"" or the carefully guarded yoga. All of that she found faintly ridiculous, unreal (and one senses that to Sheean, also, it has become unreal). Through a young Hindu she has a more enlightening experience in meeting his guru, and learns that her own readiness is vital- and that when that comes she will find the answer, in her own heart. The story is told in counterpoint:- first Elizabeth's story, as she journeys half a world away from her husband, a member of the State Department, learns that she is at times possessed wholly, unreasonably, by a purely physical lust, the object meaningless to her, and that she must understand this in herself before she can accept -- and bring him to accept- her undeviating love for her husband; second- and alternating thereafter- the story of her husband, Charles, and his brief but spectacular involvement in ""the Affaire Sneeze"", when his interest in human beings in trouble persuades him to help a couple escape the closing-in of the net of the Soviet -- and almost costs him his job. Ultimately, of course, she finds the answer in her own heart- and they are joined again, this time ""for keeps"". Good reading, when the author does not deviate from his central theme into too long philosophical excursions.

Pub Date: June 2, 1952

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1952

Categories: FICTION