No male figure is more traditional—literarily, psychologically, historically—than the epic hero. Thus it is all the more surprising and stimulating to see the heroic mode used in Les Guérillères to express the feminist point of view, and to see, moreover, that the work succeeds brilliantly on several levels….

Ignoring or flouting literary fashion, the book combines atemporal anachronism with anthropological description and epic pastiche with dead seriousness of tone. Add such themes as bloody warfare between men and women and poetic celebration of the female genitalia, and the mixture is, for some readers, too rich and strange. The central problem, however, remains the simple fact that many readers cannot take with genuine artistic seriousness a book whose only male characters are at best of tertiary importance. (p. 71)

And yet a good deal happens in this book without benefit of male presence. We observe the...