["Château en Suède"] is unquestionably highly civilized, unusual entertainment that addles you, astonishes you, and makes you laugh, except during its dialogues of intense, well-phrased candor, when the author's skill in writing about the human heart silences the audience. The story itself is like a charade that pantomimes wayward or ruthless adult relations, and it would belong in the dramatic realm of [Luigi] Pirandello if it were treated with dark realism…. The humor and laughter that accompany [the] terrible goings on come in part from the Gothic amoral quality of the situations themselves, in part from Mlle. Sagan's fountain of quizzical dialogue, and in part from the shock of her unexpected truths, which achieve the sense of comedy in their broad effects of surprise. Underneath the willful fantasy of the period costumes—a wonderful theatrical device on her part, since contemporary clothes would leave her characters...