SOURCE: A review of La Moustache, in The French Review, Vol. LX, No. 6, May, 1987, pp. 904-05.

In the following mixed review of The Mustache, Solomon contends that "Carrère has some difficulty sustaining the premise of his novel—maintaining both the literal and the metaphorical significance of the mustache and its removal."

La Moustache begins with an apparently trivial event. The protagonist, a Parisian architect, designated in the text simply as il, decides one afternoon to shave off the mustache he has worn for several years. Its removal is intended to tease his wife Agnès, who had jokingly remarked that she would like to see him clean-shaven. The modern reader has come to expect that such innocuous gestures can have catastrophic consequences, and this one is no exception. As the narrator notes "l'ordre du monde avait subi un dérèglement à la fois abominable et discret." The...