SOURCE: "All or Nothing," in Saturday Review, Vol. LI, No. 15, April 13, 1968, pp. 46-7.

In the following short review, Easton discusses the plot and style of Les choses.

This seems to be the era of the non-fiction novel—first Truman Capote's, then Norman Mailer's, and now, on a much smaller scale, one by Georges Perec. For while Les choses is subtitled "A Story of the Sixties," it is closer to a case history than to fiction. Jérôme and Sylvie, the young Parisian couple on whom the account centers, remain two-dimensional. Never once in the book's 125 pages do they speak for themselves; there is no dialogue. M. Perec tells the reader rather than shows him; one is not allowed to draw his own conclusions.

And yet the idea that M. Perec is exploring is fascinating and probably explains why Les choses won the French Prix Renaudot and, according...