In Search of a Brilliant White Cloud
Simon Van Der Heym

Review by Alan Gordon

In Search of a Brilliant White Cloud, a novel about a Holocaust survivor’s childhood in Europe and adulthood in North America, puts its author Simon Van Der Heym within sight of literary excellence, but not yet within grasp.

This often amusing tale could be more enjoyable but for occasionally stilted dialog, incomplete details that leave the reader feeling as if reading a timeline of events not fully fleshed out, and an almost incoherent building of suspense in relation to arising conflict between the protagonist, Eric, and those around him.

The tale seems flat, as if a man were relating his life story into a tape recorder for an interview. There are passages relating heart-rending events (such as Eric’s childhood flight across Europe during WWII and the separation of his Jewish family in order to avoid detection) which, although they portray great sadness and strife, fail to inspire passion in the reader, as if the author himself suffered the same emotional detachment flaw which the protagonist seeks to overcome.

In one passage, for example, the then-teenaged Eric runs away from home in order to visit his sweetheart and her mother over the holidays. The character, already suffering flat affect from the rigors of his earlier flight from Nazi power, notices with some tenderness the deep bond between his girlfriend and her mother. The passage relates:

That, evening, the three of them talked until very late, and Eric was seeing for the first time this beautiful relationship of parenthood, which he had not known existed. It became clear to him that these two women, mother and daughter, were more than just great friends. It touched him deeply.

In this example, the reader knows perfectly well what the author means but is left wanting details: what did the mother and daughter say which inspired such feeling in Eric? In what way was Eric so moved? Did he express this feeling, or hide it from his love and her mother?

While sympathizing with the novel’s protagonist is easy, Van Der Heym does not establish a dramatic sense of voice with which the reader can identify and with which the reader can fully empathize. One cannot help but wonder if this novel might have been better told in the first person rather than the third.

Not until near the end of the novel, when the aging Eric is battling cancer, can readers start to empathize with him, as he suddenly develops a sense of meaning in his life, and in that moment of illumination discovers in his mind’s eye the brilliant white cloud from which his novel takes its name. If the author’s intent was to have the reader more fully appreciate this moment of enlightenment, then perhaps the character should have been portrayed more clearly as a tragic figure whom the reader wished to develop such a sense of meaning. Instead, the tale up to that point is so flat that the reader may barely care.

Ivy House Books, 2004: ISBN 1-57197-420-2