[In the following review, Roberts asserts that Le Chercheur d'or is an enjoyable work if the reader can “accept the emotional wringing” of the central character, Alexis.]

Le Clézio's latest work, Le Chercheur d'or, falls into the category of a neoromantic novel, which may not appeal to today's public. Beautiful description of exotic lands, of travels on small nineteenth-century sailing ships to islands off the east coast of Africa, all overshadowed by the mystery of death, the cruelty of nature, and, above all, the self-pitying loneliness of the narrator, permeate its pages. The reader may wish that Le Clézio had refrained from his tendency toward verbosity in descriptive detail but is grateful for immersion in the picturesque realm of uncultivated nature.

Alexis, the solitary narrator through whose thoughts the reader follows the course of the story, begins by recounting his memories of a happy childhood among the sugarcane plantations on the island of Mauritius. His sole confidante is his sister Laure, for whom he develops an almost obsessive devotion. After his father's financial failure and death, Alexis sails to the island of Rodrigues in search of buried gold, a quest his father had contemplated before him. There, as Alexis wanders alone looking for the treasure of ancient pirates, lovely Ouma appears mysteriously. Together they swim among the coral reefs, listen to the wind in the trees, find happiness in each other's arms.

However, World War I, the product of man's hate, breaks out, and Alexis spends many months in the trenches of northern France. When he returns to Mauritius, his mother dies and Laure enters a convent; nothing is left. Ouma reappears for a year of supreme happiness in the beauty of the wilds. As might be expected, however, she too leaves, forced by the authorities to return to her homeland. Alexis, dreaming of happiness “de l'autre côté du monde, dans un lieu où l'on ne craint plus les signes du eiel, ni la guerre des hommes,” now realizes that gold no longer holds any appeal.

There is genuine pleasure for the reader in this refreshing novel, if he is willing to accept the emotional wringing of a modern Paul et Virginie.