SOURCE: Thompson, William. Review of Étoile errante, by J. M. G. Le Clézio. French Review 67, no. 4 (March 1994): 704.

In the following review, Thompson offers a positive assessment of Étoile errante.

There are two “wandering stars” in Le Clézio's latest novel, Étoile errante, two young women whose paths cross only once and for one brief moment which results in a solitary exchange of names on the blank page of a notebook. This chance encounter will, however, have a lasting, significant impact on both as the journeys of these two “stars,” Esther and Nejma, take radically different routes.

Esther, whom her father lovingly calls “Estrellita” (“Little Star”), is, as the novel begins, a young Jewish girl living with her parents in the mountains north of Nice. In fact, they are less “living” than trying to avoid the increasingly ominous Nazi presence in occupied France. Every day Esther and her...