Reviewed in Brief

Early in this study of the French novel’s renaissance since 1914 the authors speak of “a movement away from fictional forms,” and the novel’s recent tendency toward the essay, the journal, the more personal avowal. Oddly, then, their book spends most of its pages digesting the plots of such wholly undistinguished fictioneers as Aragon, Bosco, Aymé, etc.; and even more oddly, it omits any consideration of, for instance, Montherlant, Jouhandeau, Genet, or even Colette, whose works are among the best examples extant of the novel-turned-testament. Since Miss Bree has elsewhere written excellently on Proust, the only explanation seems to be an earnest wish to cater to the resolutely provincial taste of “college French” departments.

A rakish black-sheep son gets an abrupt comeuppance the morning he discovers that his papa’s will has left him nothing but a gold watch. But he has not been a bounder for nothing. Before lunch, he has not only blackmailed his relatives and made a date with a pretty young thing who appears to be his bastard half-sister; he has also talked his way into—at a conservative estimate—a full season of bestsellerdom, nine months on Broadway, and a year in Hollywood.

RB

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Roger Becket

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Early in this study of the French novel’s renaissance since 1914 the authors speak of “a movement away from fictional forms,” and the novel’s recent tendency toward the essay, the journal, the more personal avowal. Oddly, then, their book spends most of its pages digesting the plots of such wholly undistinguished fictioneers as Aragon, Bosco, Aymé, etc.; and even more oddly, it omits any consideration of, for instance, Montherlant, Jouhandeau, Genet, or even Colette, whose works are among the best examples extant of the novel-turned-testament. Since Miss Bree has elsewhere written excellently on Proust, the only explanation seems to be an earnest wish to cater to the resolutely provincial taste of “college French” departments.

A rakish black-sheep son gets an abrupt comeuppance the morning he discovers that his papa’s will has left him nothing but a gold watch. But he has not been a bounder for nothing. Before lunch, he has not only blackmailed his relatives and made a date with a pretty young thing who appears to be his bastard half-sister; he has also talked his way into—at a conservative estimate—a full season of bestsellerdom, nine months on Broadway, and a year in Hollywood.