This must be regarded as a "neglected book". I came across it by chance in my grandfather's bookcase.
Set in Jo'burg, possibly in the early Fifties, the book presents the points of view of four members of the Leventhal family on the Friday before a long weekend Yom Kippur. They are parents, Sophie and Sydney and the middle two of their children, Laurie (an apprentice druggist) and Jessie (a law clerk). The book has four chapters devoted to each. Each is beset by personal, spiritual, familial and societal considerations that are often at odds with the turbulent and tense struggle to maintain one's ground in the big city; in this case it's Jewish culture and religion that is at stake.
The mother is devoted to family but this devotion brings worries about status, money and its scarcity, her husband's health and the decline in his fortunes, scandal and gossip and finding suitable Jewish matrimonial matches for her kids. She treats the Bantu servant, Sixpence as "too much of a nonentity to be regarded as a person", vilely.
Laurie, the middle son, has caused consternation on two fronts. He wants to give up as an apprentice pharmacist and take up writing. This is anathema to parents who have scrimped and sacrificed to send him to college and, on qualifying, on the way to a status job (although not in the same league as a surgeon or medical specialist). The other front is Poppy Harris, a Gentile young woman who was once a boarder with the family. They are desperately hot for each other and desperate measures are adopted. Poppy is another source of loathing and denunciation for Mrs. Leventhal.
Mr. Leventhal is yet another cause for concern. As a young man he has prospered in real estate as the Witwatersrand gold fields burgeoned. Once married he rediscovers his religion. It brings him his greatest comfort and guidance. He has given away his prosperous career and now finds solace and a retreat in owning a shabby book-store in the city. He is aware that his decisions have brought economies to his family, about which he is concerned, but it is his Jewish faith and culture that predominate. He is a sad and fading personality.
Unlike the daughter, Jessie, who is fully alive, intelligent and capable in a variety of jobs in a male dominated commercial world. She works in a lawyers' office, one of whom acts for Africans who suffer daily indignities. She is in love with the lawyer's son, but this relationship has run into a Jew/Gentile impasse that causes her grief and resignation, at least from her job.
This is a very good book; it is a first effort for Segal, about whom I know nothing. The only disappointment is that no story can develop because the book's structure is bound by the confines of a single day. The detailed characters embodied in the novel cry out for a plot or plots.
It's interesting to know that Jo'burg was a tough dangerous city well before the 1970's when the townships erupted in revolt. The likelihood of uproar and dispute in the street is ever present. We're aware of an overriding suspicion between the different cultures and peoples who have washed up there. The same unease infects the Leventhal family. There's a sense that it's all a temporary set up. Unspoken thoughts will one day be realised.
I'd love to know more about Albert Segal. Did he write anything else? What became of him?