This novel in the guise of a travel guide might intrigue literary theorists but will likely
exasperate readers looking for plot character motivation and meaning.There was a period
during the late '60s and '70s when college students who fancied themselves intellectuals
devoured the nouveau roman ("new novel") of Robbe-Grillet as avidly as they did the
existentialism of Sartre and Camus. Even then Ricardou remained little-known outside his
native France though this new translation of his 1969 novel shows even more of an absurdist's
sense of humor than most literary experimentalists. The prose at the outset is as descriptively
flat as a travel guidebook with the author working his way through towns that are not only
organized alphabetically but geographically and perhaps thematically as well. Along the way
the reader notices the recurrence of a prominent painter of the region Albert Crucis whose
name (or pseudonym) translates as "white cross." All of the place-name translations may (or may
not) have significance as well or so the reader might learn from Atta and Olivier two Crucis
scholars whose novel this becomes as it progresses. Or does it? It turns out that one or both
of the scholars have already read this book at least the preceding pages as part of their
research and thus ponder whether they have any existence outside these pages. Later the novel
introduces a first-person "I" who not only purports to be the author but who provides insight
into the narrative (or non-narrative) strategy and predicts how the novel will be received:
"The publication of this work will allow some to advance further down the path toward coherence
but from a predictable majority I have no doubt it will garner nothing but sarcasm and
occasional threats." The reader wondering what it all means will find himself in the position
of the character with a magnifying glass monitoring the movement of ants.Fiction about the
essence of fiction challenges the reader to distinguish between what's allegory and what's
arbitrary. (Kirkus Reviews)
