Essentially Mme. Sarraute seeks out the first tender shoots of our mental life—more evolved than the undifferentiated static that fluctuates during every living moment, but not yet so conscious that it gets caught and stifled in the rough net of conventional language. As a result, all her novels alternate between clumsy pregnant silences and the impasse of freeze-dried clichés.

This alternation also characterizes the mood and style of "Childhood" and shapes its vignettes. Time after time a section hinges on a commonplace expression that crashes into a young girl's consciousness and becomes the burden of her existence….

Several sections begin with such an arresting expression and patiently try to worm their way around the verbal-mental block it created in the child. Others open in an intermediate realm of the child's floating perceptions and suddenly come aground on the shoal of unfeeling words thoughtlessly uttered by adults...