The Body Snatchers

MICHEL, MICHEL by Robert Lewis. 735 pages. Simon & Schuster. $7.50.

After a publisher produces two hits, a good move is to find a third book that mates them. Simon & Schuster boasts one of the year's biggest Jewish novels, The Chosen, as well as a more lighthearted Catholic bestseller, The Secret of Santa Vittoria. Their publishing offspring is a Catholic-Jewish novel--specifically the story of a custody fight between the two faiths that becomes a body-snatching contest.

Michel is a seven-year-old French Jewish orphan whose father died in a concentration camp; his mother swallowed cyanide to avoid being sent to one. During the war, a daring band of nuns spirits him to safety in a nursery run by Mile. Odette Rose, who has Michel baptized, and after the war refuses to give him up to his aunt and uncle in Palestine. Her battle is joined by the French Catholic Church up to the level of cardinal. In fighting assorted Zionists, the Catholics revert to their underground railway, but what was heroism in wartime is now kidnaping.

Author Lewis unvaryingly places law and truth on the side of the Jews, though he dedicates the book "to my Catholic wife." He never animates Michel's character, never lets the child himself choose between Mile. Rose and his Israeli relatives. Instead, Jewish characters talk endlessly about history and suffering, Catholics indulge in petty lies and machinations. One Jewish character says wisely: "Better he be a good French Catholic than a neurotic Israeli Jew," but only one priest knows right from wrong. Though modeled on St. Peter, he proves to be papier-mache instead of rock.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.