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Reviews 203 has witnessed a change in narrative techniques, due in part to the impact of 9/11 on the literary consciousness. While the approaches to this issue vary from one article to another, a common thread is the contention that “si le XXe siècle a été celui de la déconstruction du récit et du narré, le début du XXIe est celui de la déconstruction de la narration [...] paradoxalement alliée [au] retour du récit”(155). The contributions are grouped into three categories each dealing with the question of contemporary literature from a different perspective.“Nouveau siècle,nouvelles phrases romanesques” considers the issue in terms of innovations in language itself, such as “parenthèse en abyme” (25), as well as sundry linguistic techniques for extending sentences (44). While such developments can appear simply technical, the authors share the assumption that the contemporary texts under discussion deploy these practices with the common goal of developing new approaches to today’s reality. The second section, “Au XXIe siècle, la fiction et la vie,”deals with the relations between literary techniques and the depiction of the contemporary world. Julien Piat discusses adjustments in the deployment of the first-person narrative. Stephen Bikialo explores the gray area separating fiction from non-fiction, focusing primarily on Annie Ernaux’s Les années, while Alan Rabatel continues and expands Bikialo’s reading through an exploration of the use of visual images in Les années. The final section, “Nouveaux espaces de fiction,” concentrates on recent developments in the graphic novel (Dürrenmatt), and the relationship between Philippe Djian’s Doggy Bag and television series: “Djian est le seul auteur du XXIe siècle qui ait tenté de s’approprier les formes, les codes et jusqu’au volume de la série télévisée” (146). The discussions in this volume are often highly technical and suppose some background in linguistics. Yet each is solidly developed and provides a challenging perspective both on the individual works mentioned and a certain sort of contemporary novel.If Fictions narratives has one discernible weakness, it has to do with the title itself. This is not a general study of fictional narrative in the twenty-first century. Its focus is a much narrower, albeit important dimension of today’s fiction, the extreme contemporary. While this area is certainly of scholarly interest, it is just one direction in which the contemporary novel is moving. Fictions narratives does an excellent job in uncovering and exploring the linguistic complexity of texts that fall into this category, but in admiring the achievement of this branch of contemporary fiction and the scholars who examine it, one should not forget that today’s novel is as sophisticated in its diversity as it is in its techniques. Florida State University, emeritus William Cloonan Parisse, Lydie. Lagarce: un théâtre entre présence et absence. Paris: Garnier, 2014. ISBN 978-2-8124-1395-7. Pp. 219. 25 a. This monograph is a study of the work of Jean-Luc Lagarce (1957–95), who has become a contemporary classic of French theater: his plays have been among the most widely performed in France since the start of the twenty-first century, Juste la fin du monde was added to the repertory of the Comédie-Française in 2008, and two of his plays were selected for the baccalauréat and the agrégation exams in 2010 and 2012 respectively. Parisse argues that Lagarce’s theater is marked by a“profonde négativité” (10) that is nevertheless constructive in so far as it is inseparable from the dramatist’s originality, which she examines in the three parts of her book. Part one, “La parole trouée,”focuses on Lagarce’s creation of a language for the stage that is fragmented and impotent, yet self-consciously theatrical and expressive of the drama of language itself. This section of the book is a continuation of Parisse’s earlier work in La parole trouée: Beckett, Tardieu, Novarina (Minard, 2008), and the same three authors are central points of reference in her discussion of Lagarce’s distinct use of language. In part two, “Mythologie...

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