A CHANGE OF HEART

The 1957 Prix Renaudot is an experimental novel of some virtuosity and it is perhaps for its technical accomplishment that it is most likely to command interest and commend praise. During a twenty-four hour trip between Paris and Rome, a middle-aged man, escaping from a lifeless marriage to the renewal of a romance with a younger woman, begins the journey with the hope of making a final break. His darting observation of the changing landscape, of those that share his compartment, alternates with the flickering thoughts of a consciousness which streams through incidents of life with Henriette, his wife, and their four children, its ""net of petty rites"" to the rendezvous he has had with Cecile, in Rome, in Paris. And with the destination reached- so is a decision, which reverses the hopes entertained at the start of the journey..... A montage of migrant memories and vistas, a metabolism- of the mind rather than the heart, this, while recording an emotional experience, is almost divorced from feeling- a limiting factor.