SOURCE: A review of Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles in The Spectator, Vol. 267, No. 8528, December 21-28, 1991, p. 80.

Brookner is an English novelist, nonfiction writer, critic, and art historian whose books include Jacques-Louis David (1981) and the prizewinning novel Hotel du lac (1984). In the following excerpt, she focuses on the "clever" plot and the clear "narrative tone" of Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles.

Japrisot is the author of those two classic mysteries, L'Eté Meurtrier and La Dame dans l'auto avec des Lunettes et un Fusil. Here [in Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles] he tackles more dangerous subject matter. In January 1917 five French soldiers, drafted to the front line, shot themselves in the hand in order to escape the fighting. They were arrested, roped together, marched a certain distance, and then released into no man's land, where they would presumably be shot by the enemy. And so they...