SOURCE: "Tricky, Tricky," in The Los Angeles Times, February 12, 1995, p. 3.

The following review discusses the effect of the e-less lipograms of Perec and his translator, Gilbert Adair.

Snails. You'd want Gallic or Italian cooking to fix such a dish. You wouldn't call for it at lunch in Oslo, Omsk, Cardiff or Stuttgart; nor as an Alabama snail-fry with grits, nor smoking atop Oklahoma fatwood, nor in Cajun gumbo. And only a light hand such as that of this particular tricky and knotty Parisian author could bring off A Void: a total snail of a book in its spiral contortions, so that prying out its pith is both difficult and savory and (pry as you may) bits will always stay stuck within.

Eeeeeeeeeek. One paragraph is all I want to do of this. A Void does it from beginning to end, and much better (once the names of Perec...