[Les Fous de Bassan] applies the term for a sea-bird (fou = gannet) to the half-crazed remnants of a Puritan community living on the eastern sea-board. Since they came up originally from America, have English names and have remained Protestant, it seems unlikely that they would express their sexual frustrations and homicidal tendencies in Canadian French, but one never knows. The blurb suggests that the main character is the seawind, the spirit moving over the waters; perhaps this is why the book seems vacuously ambitious.

John Weightman, "From the Crab Basket," in The Observer (reprinted by permission of The Observer Limited), January 2, 1983, p. 46.