This is a hymn to glorious spontaneity, adultery and youth. It’s about a young woman, Rebecca, who counts herself as a goat rather than a sheep. The book is the story of the journeys (by motorbike) she makes between her husband and her lover.


Mandiargues wants to turn over the themes of love as (temporary) antidote to boredom; of playful passion and of liberty and he does so with this almost minimalist narrative. The writing though is not minimalist, with the woman, her trip and sensations all beautifully rendered.


While Mandiargues explores sexuality here, including in his vision of it ‘the bestial or demoniac part in every human being’ the several sex scenes in the book are spectacular rather than vulgar.


A hymn to freedom and beauty created with an almost classical simplicity, this is a liberating and poetic book of the rarest sort.

‘It is wonderful, Rebecca thinks on the bench, that nothing should ever be the same twice, and that love in particular should always be renewed in the details. It is in this little margin of change that women, that men too, probably, feel alive. And she voluptuously inhales the cold air of the forest, proud to exist and to escape tedious repetition.’ p35