SOURCE: "Vanishing Act," in Washington Post Book World, Vol. XXV, No. 11, March 12, 1995, p. 11.

Walter Abish is an author and critic. In the following review, he suggests that the lipogram format of A Void is more than just an arbitrary constraint. It is, rather, an integral part of the meaning of the story.

Georges Perec's preferred representation of life was the elusive, artfully constructed conundrum—an unlimited mystery that engages the reader as much as it animates, in several of his books, the very characters. The customary, the everyday is subsumed by the question, why, how and to what end? Questions that never receive a satisfactory response. In Life A Users Manual, a tantalizing labyrinthine novel for which Perec received the prestigious Medicis Prize in 1978, Bartlebooth, an eccentric millionaire, masters watercolor painting to paint, over the next 10 years, 550 seascapes, which he then has made into jigsaw puzzles. Finally, once...