SOURCE: Rose, Marilyn Gaddis. Review of Étoile errante, by J. M. G. Le Clézio. World Literature Today 67, no. 3 (summer 1993): 585.

In the following review of Étoile errante, Rose compliments Le Clézio's attempt to write about lesser-known historical events, but criticizes how Le Clézio “renders history through a young woman's puberty.”

The star of the title Étoile errante refers to the key character, Esther, called Estrelitta by her father, who is thirteen when the chronicle begins in the Alpine foothills near Nice, fifty-two when the book ends. The story concludes in the same place where it began, since on the occasion of her mother Elisabeth's death Esther has returned to visit the mountain site where her father died when his group of fugitives were mowed down by Germans. This was just after the Italians, having surrendered to the Americans, had pulled out of the little town where...