Marcel Béalu (1908–1993)

Marcel Adrien visits Monsieur Focat, an ophthamologist. In order to comply with the prescribed treatment he takes both a job in a mysterious workplace and lodgings in an unusual house on a square whose seeming respectability is belied by the monstrous humans living on the side streets off it.

Then things get stranger still. Adrien's adventures include living in an endless avenue, becoming a figure of adulation, having eye surgery that gives him both the chance to see the underlying beauty in his surroundings and a destructive power, being hounded for no reason by a mob, and willingly becoming a prisoner in a palace apparently constructed by M. Focat in which the statues are in fact robots of some intelligence and great malignity.

The book hangs together far better than my synopsis probably implies and is in some ways quite wonderful. If you liked Jean Ray's Malpertuis you might like this: It has the same power to catch the reader up in happenings that, however incredible, seem real and threatening. I don't think it outstandingly good mostly because one section, in which Adrien shares a shop and home with two mutes, seems less successful than the others and a bit because passing statements about ways in which a life is to be lived seemed to me superfluous. It's good though nonetheless and worth seeking out.… (more)