No Other Life:

...Naturally, they riot...

...for the noir one, they are a life of sorts-that of art, in which despair history than to unfold according to the divine imperative to do God's work in the and deep faith can complement each other novel's own imperatives...

...in one of the exquisite like a fingerprint upon the Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $21, 223 pp...

...from it, its endless struggles, its cruelties ty, and Moore renounces the most fic- "Was I elected to do these things for and despairs seemed a tale so frightening tionally seductive fact available to him, God's sake, or for the sake of the poor of that, if I told it, no one would believe such remaking the brutal "necklace" killings as Ganae...

...Even so, the strong similarities to is no other life, but draw vastly different palpable...

...But I have Simon & Schuster, $22, 244 pp...

...apocalyptic nor particularly comforting...

...For the blanc priest, the tations that there is no other life, the novel of its drama: as events develop, they seem words are an epigram of despair and mean- serves as a reminder that there is another more to conform to the contours of recent inglessness...

...Even to me as I flew away in passages of firm, cold, novelistic beau- This, of course, is Jeannot's theology...

...It, too, is an end-of-the-century reedge into unbelief...

...As charged hope and civic unrest...

...he is now a skep- Wrath of Nations is tous though it may be, is in truth a fiction, tic even as he regards Jeannot as a kind a refreshing antidote an invention of the nineteenth century, as of saint...

...University of Notre Dame, editor of The novel is narrated by one Paul The Commonweal for 12 years, Michel, a French Canadian priest who, after president of Hunter College, two decades serving the poor of Ganae, is "looking at the empty pages of my life," negotiator in postwar Germany, and mainly at his relations with the cocreator of UNESCO-takes one Reverend Jean-Paul Cantave, whom he af- on a tour of major events of the 20th fectionately calls Jeannot...

...As her last Ivan Sanders and virtues of the inescapable force known wish, she urges him to stop living the lie as nationalism...

...I believed William Pfaff abiding "fury of nationalism," is neither I had a soul that was immortal...

...a well-constructed biography as a son of sorts, and had him educated in that serves as a testament to a the Catholic schools that serve Ganae's mu- monumental life...

...significantly...

...There is no other life...

...So a place existed...

...The French Revolution, Haiti in The Comedians...

...In his time, Greene's strait- man...

...The little retrospective hand-wringing...

...to the lightenment ideals...

...A coup is planned, and Jeannot flees to ened and elusive religious outlook was sub- For his part, describing a flight out of the countryside, with Michel along as versive enough to be derided as Jansenist Ganae, Michel recalls, "My plane...

...here and now...

...ambiguities that make the novel interestpages of Brian Moore's new ing, Moore leaves unclear whether Michel novel...

...I am nothing./But I am The people come to think of him as their distant outpost, a moderate among fanat- God's servant./God has given me this redeemer, and even as their Redeemer, cry- ics, a man caught between faith and de- sword," Jeannot tells the people of Ganae, ing "C'e Mesiah...

...Meanwhile there Bicentennial Exposition Ground, that syma subtle final gambit that one suspects has emerged, in liberation theology, a re- bol of Ganae's efforts to imitate other, Aristide himself would envy...

...ligious outlook which, while wary of next- more fortunate lands...

...But the people of The novel is no simple fictionalized his- worldly transcendence, locates the hand Ganae know no other lands...

...Today such an out- over the abandoned buildings of the timate fall and rise, which culminates in look is commonplace...

...Michel is ostensibly looking back on his gains the presidency of a Caribbean is- "The history of Ganae," Michel observes, life, the story is lean and brisk, with very land country, prompting religiously "is like a cheap gramophone record...

...this time out, his novel's Ganae's military dictator is dying of AIDS...

...Though this story of a charismatic priest who Inevitably, Jeannot is drawn into politics...

...passed spiritual advisor, So begins Jeannot's ul- or just plain heretical...

...Late in his life gloomy predictions of global turmoil as after all, was at once a universalist and an Greene called Moore his favorite living well as to happy tidings about millennial intensely nationalist phenomenon...

...The book dutifully Paul Elie has planted the seed of ambition in carries a disclaimer-any resemblances Jeannot's head or just stated aloud what to actual persons are just coincidences- the younger priest was already thinking...

...no soul...

...a world apart...

...In a se- spair, between the habits of transcendence and he might seem a madman were their ries of rousing speeches-set in blank and the ache in his bones which says this circumstances not so grave, and were he verse, like the poetic passages in the broken world is all there is...

...Michel is a character straight out ning in parallel-is the most satisfying asto found a schismatic "People's Church...

...Box 635, South Bend, IN 46624 Commonweal 5 November 1993: 25 and the Vatican warns him against med- novelist, and here Moore has repaid the spiritual lives-now diverging, now rundling in politics, accusing him of trying tribute...

...From his ambiguous dedication-"To Jean"-onward, Moore has A new book about obliged those who seek an adroit blending of fact and fiction, an entertaining gloss George N. Shuster on a breaking story...

...to the swell of books is the notion of internationalism, with both As such, he resembles the protagonists about the end of of them drawing their strength from Enof the writer who depicted Duvalier-era modernity, the end of history...

...Eventually Jeannot, following Michel's example, became a priest, and $34.95 cloth now, serving the poor as pastor of the Church of the Incarnation, he has emerged At bookstores or order direct by sending as a powerful leader, "small and frail in list price plus $3.00 postage to: cheap white cotton trousers and peasant shirt, slack as a puppet on strings until the University of Notre Dame Press, P.O...

...Moore's skillful and in ways that enlarge our apprehension of This matters less than it might have, thoughtful exploration of the two priests' this life, if not the next one...

...Pfaff doesn't doubting that Jeannot's mission is any- V1 William Pfaff's The let us forget that the ethnic state, ubiquithing but a worldly one...

...Such a place does exist, a series of murders committed with ma- Michel and Jeannot alike affirm that there and in No Other Life Moore has made it chetes...

...As Michel Jerusalem Bible-Jeannot declares, A generation on, however, the terms of observes, "This wasn't `liberation theol"Rejoice./You are the people./ You have this kind of spiritual dilemma have changed ogy.' This was a faith built around one the power./Use it...

...0 though, because in the end the novel remains Father Michel's story not Jeannot's, and the longest shadow cast over it is not Jean-Bertrand Aristide's but A PRIMAL INSTINCT: NATIONALISM Graham Greene's...

...His order defrocks him ough lead essays in the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books...

...but only the truly credulous could avoid microphones were readied and the media From there, events unfold in a way that considering events in Haiti while reading people signaled that it was time to begin...

...Shuster gave witness to priest, Michel rescued Jeannot, an or- Christian humanism throughout his phan, from a squalid village, adopted him life...

...They live in tory: Ganae and its people are described of God in the shape of political history...

...Paul, I have prayed Civilization and the Fury of flection on history, but this reassessment, all my life," his mother tells him...

...But the real interest here lies in the way Moore, rather than imaginatively enlarging life, has nar- "Blantz's scholarly biography of rowed it down so that its hard truths strike Shuster-English professor at the the reader cleanly and sharply...

...When we die, there is noth- it is rather a sober recitation of the plagues ing...

...Working among Ganae's desperately poor, Michel has become a practical agnostic, and when he returns to Canada to be present at his dying mother's bedside, he is nudged over the THE WRATH OF NATIONS peace...

...And despite its characters' protesthe Haitian situation rob the plot of much conclusions...

...persedes parliament and packs his cabiabout big events...

...Like new tune plays for a while, then the nee- president, Jeannot challenges the military Moore's novels Black Robe and The Color dle sticks in the groove and the player-arm and the wealthy elite...

...net with associates who, like him, espouse prescience has prompted unusually thor- Elections are called, and Michel suggests liberation theology...

...of his priesthood, and he returns to Ganae It is not an age-old force...

...of Greeneland: a colonialist of sorts in a pect of the novel...

...he ignores or suof Blood, No Other Life is a small book slumps back and slips off the disc...

...More 26: 5 November 1993 Commonweal...

...As a young century...

...Library journal latto elite...

...Aren't they the same thing...

...I be- Nationalism of shifting political alignments and the lieved in God, in the church...

...resembles Aristide's vexed career...

...when he visits...

...not such a charismatic figure...

...BOOKS If Haiti were a novel IF he presence of the Reverend NO OTHER LIFE that Jeannot run for president as the canJean-Bertrand Aristide lies Brian Moore didate of the poor...