Any novel dealing with a woman s self-dis-

covery might be termed "a timely work about

Women s Liberation " Yet the theme of

this sensitively written, beautifully conceived

story is both more universal and more deli-

cately personal than such a narrow descrip-

tion would permit. It appeals alike to men and

women: woman finding that they will identify

in many ways with the French heroine; men

discovering much to ponder in this woman s

clarifying view of the relationships between

men and women.

As the story opens, C61ine is fleeing a mar-

riage that has grown intolerable---a husband

whose infidelities are more than those of the

flesh. While her father drives her home to the

ancestral farm in Normandy, she ruminates on

her life: she has been running away most of

her days . . . first, from her father and his

granite-hard sister who, after C61ine s mother

died in childbirth, raised her with a rigid

strictness . . . next, she fled from school in

order to marry . . . now she is escaping from

her husband

How did a lonely girl wander through thirty

years of life without becoming completely lost ?