Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Carrère, Emmanuel - John Gross (review date 1 April 1988)

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John Gross (review date 1 April 1988)

SOURCE: "Uncertain Absence Under the Nose," in The New York Times, April 1, 1988, p. C33.

[Gross is an English critic, editor, and educator. In the following review, he commends The Mustache as "an authentically eerie book, full of trick perspectives that seem to cancel one another out and yet somehow coexist."]

[In The Mustache a] young Frenchman is taking a bath—we never learn his name, so for the sake of convenience let us call him X. He is also having his second shave of the day, getting rid of a 5 o'clock shadow. It is something he always does, but on this particular evening a sudden impulse makes him call out to his wife (whose name we do know—it is Agnes): "What would you say if I shaved off my mustache?"

Agnes laughs and says that it might not be a bad idea. She has never in fact seen X without a mustache: he was already wearing one when he married her five years...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Philip H. Solomon (review date May 1987)
   2. John Gross (review date 1 April 1988)
   3. Oliver Conant (review date 17 April 1988)
   4. John Updike (review date 4 July 1988)
   5. Irving Malin (review date Spring 1989)
   6. Publishers Weekly (review date 25 May 1990)
   7. Richard Eder (review date 22 July 1990)
   8. Scott Winnett (review date November 1990)
   9. R. R. K. (review date November-December 1990)
   10. Faren Miller (review date December 1990)
4. Copyright