SOURCE: Buss, Robin. Review of La Quarantaine, by J. M. G. Le Clézio. Times Literary Supplement, no. 4858 (10 May 1996): 22.

In the following review, Buss offers a generally positive assessment of La Quarantaine.

When J. M. G. Le Clézio won the Prix Renaudot in 1963 with his first novel, Le Procès-verbal, and was acclaimed as the most promising new voice in French literature, the cultural establishment appeared to be playing one of its games. Here was the story of an outsider, an assault on the values of modern society; but with the inducement of a few plums, its talented author could probably be persuaded out of this stance of late-adolescent revolt.

Le Clézio was not to be seduced. He refused to be drawn into the Parisian literary scene (he now lives in New Mexico), and has remained a misfit among French writers, continuing to explore his unease...