SOURCE: Parker, David. “Ce n'est pas Guerre.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4214 (15 June 1984): 670.

In the following review, Parker praises The Return of Martin Guerre for its readability and for the professionalism of Davis's reconstruction of sixteenth-century village life.

In the mid-sixteenth century the village of Artigat, straddling the river Lèze in the foothills of the Pyrenees, was the home of sixty or seventy families. With a bustling local economy, founded on millet, wheat, oats, grapes and the pasturing of sheep, cows and goats, Artigat's inhabitants were well placed to benefit from the trade routes which linked Spain with Toulouse. Proud of its freedom from seigneurial obligations, the village community, although relatively egalitarian, was dominated by a small group of better-off peasants who mixed easily with the merchants and notaries of the communities up and downstream. It was to this comfortable but undistinguished peasant milieu that Martin Guerre, son...