SCHOOL FOR ETERNITY

Far and away the best work Harry Hervey has done. Melodrama, yes, but with a quality that recalls something of The Bridge of San Luis Rey with something, too, of the Prokosch technique and pattern. The background is an island in the West Indies; the setting, the incredible Citadel, with its Finnish, Turkish and Russian baths and its matchless collection of Tibetan art and its master, Count Girghiz, who likes to use the on men's souls. There, through the unfrocked priest, he has gathered strange guests for a strange week end. He pulls the strings -- their pasts are revealed to him (and to the reader), and the threads begin to interweave. Murky perversions, thwarted passions, frustrated generosity, -- then the earthquake.