SOURCE: Roberts, Alan. Review of Le Chercheur d'or, by J. M. G. Le Clézio. World Literature Today 60, no. 1 (winter 1986): 68.

In the following review, Roberts asserts that Le Chercheur d'or is an enjoyable work if the reader can “accept the emotional wringing” of the central character, Alexis.

Le Clézio's latest work, Le Chercheur d'or, falls into the category of a neoromantic novel, which may not appeal to today's public. Beautiful description of exotic lands, of travels on small nineteenth-century sailing ships to islands off the east coast of Africa, all overshadowed by the mystery of death, the cruelty of nature, and, above all, the self-pitying loneliness of the narrator, permeate its pages. The reader may wish that Le Clézio had refrained from his tendency toward verbosity in descriptive detail but is grateful for immersion in the picturesque realm of uncultivated nature.

Alexis, the solitary narrator through...