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The novel actually begins with an epigraph taken from Updike, and the narrator refers directly at one point to Philip Roth's sexually self–obsessed Alex Portnoy. In the review copy I received, blurbs by French critics compare Dubois to both authors, along with John Irving. Dubois' use of sexual comedy and his biting criticism of the French middle class do give an American feel to his writing. It's easy to see why Knopf decided to translate the novel, already a winner in France of a major literary award, the Prix Femina.

But compared to Irving, Dubois' comedy has the timing and crudeness of a teen movie like American Pie. And while Rabbit Angstrom's life spreads itself over four novels, Dubois tries to cover the same chronology in one, and with a style much less poetical than Updike's. Instead of allowing the reader to draw conclusions, Dubois is forever telling us what we are to think of a particular period or character.

Dubois is best when he avoids heavy–handed commentary and provides tragicomic details about French society. For example, Blick's grandfather is a shepherd form the Pyrenees, taken by force from his herds to serve during World War I. Shell–shocked, the grandfather only returns to the mountains as an old man and must negotiate chairlift pylons from a new ski resort—an anecdote underscoring the ravages of war and modern development on the French countryside.

Since Dubois, a French journalist born in Toulouse in 1950, describes a Frenchman born in Toulouse in 1950—who works briefly as a journalist—one wonders how much of the book is autobiographical. The passages describing Blick's abysmal university studies, his brush with the army, and his conflict with a psychotic office manager all have the feel of lived experience.

The novel also provides interesting cultural commentary on the spiritual framework of a French secular mindset. At first, "Leftism" is Blick's "theology." Sinking into middle–class life, he accepts that he is no longer "a model revolutionary activist" and realizes he believes in nothing. Even love, which he considered "a kind of belief," becomes an "illusory redemption." Toward the end of the novel, he reflects pessimistically: "whether considering my own life or the nation's destiny, I saw no way out, no light, not the slightest reason for hope or relief."

At first I thought Dubois was guilty of posturing—of imitating the gloom–and–doom attitude many French social critics display—in order to give his book a Profound Ending. Given the comic tone of his novel, I now wonder if Dubois is merely satirizing this perspective.

For Blick never acts on his beliefs. He never votes or is involved in any political action other than rioting as a youth. In faith, love, and politics, Blick—the archetypal soixante–huitard (1968 revolutionary)—lacks true conviction. And perhaps that is Dubois' explanation for the recent failures of the Left and the conservative swing in French society.

Otto Selles is professor of French at Calvin College.

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