SOURCE: "Revolt Against Nature," in The New Yorker, Vol. XXVIII, No. 8, April 12, 1952, pp. 129-30.

West was an English-born journalist and author who contributed essays and book reviews to magazines such as The New Yorker. The son of writers H. G. Wells and Rebecca West, he wrote a frank and revealing biography of his father titled H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life (1984). In the following review of The Weakling and The Enemy, West discusses the misogyny evident in Mauriac's work.

François Mauriac, whose two short novels The Weakling and The Enemy have just been issued in a single volume, is one of the intellectual pillars of the Roman Catholic Church in France. He has been called one of the greatest living writers by many reputable European critics who have judged his work by purely literary standards. His work is, however, primarily religious, and it seems to present...