SOURCE: "Is This Paranoia, or Am I Nuts?," in The New York Times Book Review, April 17, 1988, p. 36.

In the following negative review of The Mustache, Conant asserts that Carrère's novel is flawed by "improbable ingredients, implausibly combined, [and an excess of gimmicky contrivances."]

To have and enjoy a mustache, to rather pride oneself on one's mustache—a fine, thick, dark mustache of 10 years' duration, and then, suddenly wishing to see oneself differently, to shave off this mustache. Then to discover that not only do one's acquaintances fail to observe any change in one's appearance, but that one's wife of five years (half the lifespan of the mustache, consequently a woman who has only known one with a mustache) appears oblivious to the change and declares positively that one has never worn a mustache!

This is the modest premise of Emmanuel Carrère's short, rather silly novel [The...