Volume 15, Number 7 · October 22, 1970
Divided Selves
By D.A.N. Jones
Maltaverne
by François Mauriac, translated by Jean Stewart
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 195 pp., $5.95
The Driver's Seat
by Muriel Spark
Knopf, 128 pp., $4.95
The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange
by Marie-Claire Blais, translated by Derek Coltman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 217 pp., $5.95
The Stunt Man
by Paul Brodeur
Atheneum, 278 pp., $5.95
Play It As It Lays
by Joan Didion
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 214 pp., $5.95
Youth from the past. Un adolescent d'autrefois was the original title of Maltaverne which Mauriac published in 1969, when he was eighty-three, a year before his death. For the last thirty years of his life he had written very little fiction, preferring to concentrate on essays and perhaps ephemeral political commentaries. Finally, in Maltaverne, he recapitulated with authority the themes of his prewar novels, marrying the skill and experience of his great age with a fresh, youthful expectancy to produce a fitting conclusion to his life as a writer. If nothing else, it is a polished and powerful piece of storytelling. The energy and cunning of this old craftsman, so near to death, is an encouragement to the living.
Review, 3783 words
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