Alain Robbe-Grillet, one of the greatest 20th century writers, and arguably the most important living one, teamed up with the paintings of Rene Magritte, another superlative figure in 20th century art. How could this possibly go wrong? For starters, the translation is not by Richard Howard, who translated The Voyeur, Jealousy, and basically all of Robbe-Grillet's greatest works. No other translator has ever achieved the precision, polish and perfection of Howard's efforts, which have the effect of making even Robbe-Grillet's most Gothic passages seem incomparably elegant.

The other glaring problem with the book is the quality of the painting reproductions. Printed in low-detail black and white, they function schematically as narrative signposts, but convey little beauty in their own right. Having viewed almost all the original paintings, I would say that even full-color glossy reproductions generally fail to convey their surprising sensuousness, and that the reproductions in this book fail miserably. They're just plain ugly.

This is not a bad book, by any means, but it does fall very far short of what it might have been.