Marie Cardinal's writings since 1962 articulate the major intellectual concerns of contemporary France: psychoanalysis and language; the politics of decolonization; questions of female creativity and the sociocultural construction of gender. But her significance as a novelist rests on her ability to translate these concerns into a thematics and a narrative form which have broad appeal. She is, by all standards, a popular author. Her best-known works, La Clé sur la porte (Open-door Policy, 1972) and Les Mots pour le dire (1975; translated as The Words to Say It, 1983), have each sold 3,800,000 copies in Europe, and Les Mots pour le dire has been translated into eighteen languages. Cardinal has become, in the words of one American critic, "a leading spokeswoman for the female condition." An accomplished writer, Cardinal often interweaves present narrative with reminiscences about the fragrances, colors, faces, and sensations of her early Mediterranean world. Her experiences as a child...