The Use of Speech
Nathalie Sarraute

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In this reprint of a classic later work from French novelist Nathalie Sarraute, one finds a “delectably austere, beady-eyed book. . . . The phrases that give rise to the scenes or episodes are ordinary enough until Sarraute imagines for them a context which turns them from bland civilities into weapons of psychological warfare. Friends meet and converse, in a café or in the street, and are all sociability; except underneath, where the best of friends can be the most savage of opponents. Sarraute resorts sardonically to metaphor to indicate what words will not capture: the shameful and ineffable animosities that . . . imperil our urbanity” (The Times Literary Supplement).