[A Literary Affair will not convince us that Marie-Claire Blais's talent has come to maturity. The novel] describes Mathieu Lelièvre, a young Québécois writer who travels to Paris on a Canada Council grant in search of fame and self-discovery….

It is not the deliberately grim atmosphere that is embarrassing. Examining the novel for its literary quality, one is confused by its systematic character, its gratuitous extravagance, its falseness and emptiness. It is not the first story of the provincial or unknown artist seeking fame in the big city. Literary examples are numerous, as Mathieu Lelièvre knows, and one has in mind Balzac's and Proust's descriptions of the young writer trying to make it among the chosen few….

What is disappointing in A Literary Affair is that Marie-Claire Blais never gives us the feeling of Paris and its literary circles and the movement of ideas...