With an air of the very best Samuel Beckett, Pinget describes, in an old man’s monologue, a tiny provincial world in rural France with its mind-bending circularities of persons and actions and absurdity.


The monologue is in the form of a letter which is an obsessively, brilliantly futile gesture, the gesture of a lover who knows his love is lost but feels it anyway, and so continues. In the letter the old man describes in great detail the village where he lives and its inhabitants. A fixed little world emerges where everything is known and limited; the two cafés, the one Curé, the old maids and the widowers... From this fixity there emerges too a species of restfulness, a kind of quiet rural despair that is both tranquil and poignant. Pinget transmits, if less abstractly and coolly, the mood of T.S.Eliot in ancient English churchyards mulling on the passage of men and seasons.


The narrative of No Answer is fascinatingly continuous; just unrolling, perhaps like a long poem; a very hard thing to acheive in prose, which lacks the musical, rhythmic supports of poetry.


An often amusing, original book, quite brilliant in its way.

‘Sonia and Odette tend to wander down to the river, most times they drop in for tea at a restaurant called Aux Trois Abeilles, which is rather a snooty sort of place. Napoleon stayed there once, or so they claim, and piously produce a small crop of mementoes dating from the occasion. If there’s an atom of truth in it, I’d be mightily surprised. At all events, the things they show you are patent fakes. There’s a little black pocket-book, all worn and tattered, the sort of thing you can pick up at any second-hand junkshop, and a handkerchief, and of course the famous hat, which must have been turned out by the thousand by now. A handful of miscellaneous jewellery too, God knows where that comes from; and statuettes of the Emperor, which sell to customers at 300 fr. apiece. The restaurant belongs to a fellow named Silvio Barbatti, and he wasn’t born yesterday, not by any manner of means. He must be making a mint of money with that ‘wine-and-dine’ menu of his, ‘for Patrons who Appreciate fine Cuisine’. Like hell it is. Two thousand francs all in. Including champagne. Of a kind. Better not enquire where he gets it. And his lobster-prawns. Draw the veil quickly.’ p101