As Alain Robbe-Grillet says in his For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction, the nouveau roman is an exploration and an evolution of the genre of the novel. While aiming at total subjectivity, the modern novel should not be a representation of anything but itself. Reality is sense perception and concerns only man in his situation in the world. Sequence of events and narrative are often eliminated, with the result a plotless train of occurrences alternating without warning between present and past.

Such is the style of the extraordinary young French-Canadian, Marie-Claire Blais, the only writer in this hemisphere who has fully mastered the trend current in France. (p. 708)

Through the relationships of the possessed figures in [The Day Is Dark and Three Travelers], among whom the narrative shifts, Mlle. Blais creates a unique microcosm of her own wherein the characters, isolated from the conventional forms of time...