A presiding genius of the French literary avant-garde, Alain Robbe-Grillet, scientist turned philosopher, challenged the novel form by subjecting it to his preception of the meaning of reality. All of which really means he is very clever, almost too clever. First published in 1957, Jealousy is set on a banana plantation and observes a woman and married man who may or may not be about to embark on an affair. Every movement, every gesture is carefully chronicled and the narrative has a relentlessly circular, near-ritual action. Time is deliberately imploded, details are meticulously provided, the reader is reduced to mesmerised voyeur. Technically, it is a virtuoso performance, if too clever, too repetitive and too inclined to make one suspect that the American experimentalist, Robert Coover, could have made the same story a lot funnier.
