SOURCE: "Uncertain Absence Under the Nose," in The New York Times, April 1, 1988, p. C33.

Gross is an English critic, editor, and educator. In the following review, he commends The Mustache as "an authentically eerie book, full of trick perspectives that seem to cancel one another out and yet somehow coexist."

[In The Mustache a] young Frenchman is taking a bath—we never learn his name, so for the sake of convenience let us call him X. He is also having his second shave of the day, getting rid of a 5 o'clock shadow. It is something he always does, but on this particular evening a sudden impulse makes him call out to his wife (whose name we do know—it is Agnes): "What would you say if I shaved off my mustache?"

Agnes laughs and says that it might not be a bad idea. She has never in fact...