SOURCE: A review of When Things of the Spirit Come First, in The French Review, Vol. LIV, No. 6, May, 1981, p. 890.

In the following assessment of When Things of the Spirit Come First, the critic finds Beauvoir's stories immature but significant for the light they shed on "both the difficulties of the young writer and her eventual achievement"

The information on the cover, which indicates that this is the author's first book and that it is a novel, is somewhat misleading on two counts. In La Force de l'âge, summarizing her early literary attempts, she writes, "J'avais écrit deux longs romans dont les premiers chapitres tenaient à peu près debout mais qui dégénéraient ensuite en un informe fatras. Je résolus cette fois de composer des récits assez brefs et de les mener d'un bout à l'autre avec rigueur" (p. 229). These five récits, composed...