Momo is so strenuously, so determinedly heartwarming, that it seems in constant danger of blowing a fuse. As for the orphan boy Momo, he's a winsome tyke if ever there was one, a veritable Little Lord Fauntleroy of the gutter, and yet I must admit I managed to remain completely inured to his charms. In fact, with each new ingenuous pronouncement upon the human condition that the young philosophe made—"I believe that if you want to live, you should start very young because later on you're sure to depreciate and no one will make you any presents"—I found myself growling in belatedly-recognized sympathy with that childophobe, W. C. Fields.

Momo inverses the usual literary relationship: it is a novel by a "child" written for "adults." (p. 34)

Ajar can't seem to decide whether he wants Momo to talk like an illiterate or a college professor. His confusion is mirrored in the translation, which veers wildly between the vernacular—"far out"—and the literary—"flummoxed"—and occasionally careens into undisguised garble: "For somebody so alone it was amazing how much of her there was, and there in that can I think she must have felt more alone than ever." When Momo refers to his tattered clothes he points out that he has to "snatch garmentry," which is the most unusual and unchildlike description of shoplifting I've ever come across. Since Ralph Manheim is an able translator of long practice it is to be assumed that the crazy-quilt effect is intentional. Still one wonders: is this, perhaps, less strained in the original? Does all this smart-assed precocity sound more natural-voiced, or could it be that the French simply have a high tolerance for deadly coyness?

Momo tugs unabashedly at one's heart—or is it ham?—strings. I chuckled faintly once or twice and at no moment felt the urge to dab at what were after all perfectly dry eyes. In conception Momo is something of a throwback—much like the hugely successful musical Annie—to the raffish-spirited movies of the '40s, where the baby left on the door-step turns out to be a long-lost darling. It is, to be quite judicious, nothing worse than the equivalent of peasant's fare—hearty with plot, thick with good intentions, and heavily seasoned with slices of "reality." (pp. 35-6)