SOURCE: A review of La Passion des femmes, in The French Review, Vol. LXI, No. 6, May, 1988, pp. 991-92.

In the following review of La Passion des femmes, Mackey suggests that while much of the novel is captivating, it is, finally, not entirely satisfying.

The novelist Jean-Baptiste Rossi, whose anagrammatic nom de plume, Sébastien Japrisot, is more widely known, published his eighth novel in 1986, which found its way immediately onto the best-seller lists in France. With the renown of L'Eté meurtrier and the hugely successful film, a certain following has apparently been sustained by the commercial reclame of La Passion des femmes.

It is a love story, a work of suspense and pursuit, a collection of often erotic encounters that examine the biases of our perceptions, a surreal glimpse into the question of ultimate reality. It easily ensnares the reader into its strange fiction where different mirrors cast...