It is a temptation not always easily avoided to discuss the work of Julien Green by way of thematic or atmospheric generalizations, as opposed to an appreciation of precise narrative and artistic qualities. Gloomy, sultry, ominous; the epithets are by now very familiar—too familiar, perhaps, for they tend to deflect critical attention from Green's concern with problems of literary form and style….

In complete contrast to [the] earlier novels, which were set either in the United States or in an anonymous French province,… Épaves (1932) based on madness and death, is a restrained and muted account of a crisis in the life of a mediocre Parisian bourgeois, Philippe Cléry. (p. 103)

Although the novel is full of obsessions, imaginings and dreams, its structure is noticeably different from that of the preceding ones; and it is this static, in many ways circular plot which underlies much of the argument...