SOURCE: Talbot, Emile J. Review of La Ronde et autres faits divers, by J. M. G. Le Clézio. World Literature Today 57, no. 1 (winter 1983): 62.

In the following review, Talbot argues that the characters in La Ronde complement the characters found in Le Clézio's Mondo et autres histoires.

Le Clézio previous collection of short stories, Mondo et autres histoires (1978), celebrated the attainment of a fresh intimacy with the universe by children who were able to bypass the confining world of modern urban life (see WLT 53:2, p. 249), but his latest collection, La Ronde, features characters whose efforts to escape lead only to defeat. The tone is set by the first story, “La Ronde,” a tale of a brief escapade on a motorcycle which ends in tragedy for a teenage girl. The attempts on the part of the central characters in the remaining stories to break out of their...