she has no idea where he is. Pierre then finds another solution: Henri has gone to visit his daughter in England. Isabelle, however, has talked to the daughter, and Henri is not there. Then, Isabelle tells Pierre that she is closing the café for a week. She asks him to accept the deliveries on Tuesday; he agrees, but he has a week to get through without a job. He checks his eligibility for his pension and finds he has thirteen more trimesters to work. Pierre goes to the café each day, wiping down the bar, checking on everything. Then, at the end of the week, Pierre is alone in the closed café when the telephone rings and he recognizes his boss’s voice. The café has been sold. Pierre feels betrayed and refuses to tell Amadée. After the phone call, alone in the café, he lets out a yowl. His life as a barman there is over.

In a self-indulgent response to this devastating blow, he opens the café for business. Soon the regulars, including the young man who reads Levi, begin to come into the café. Amadée arrives and Pierre serves free drinks to everyone. They close at nine-thirty, and Pierre is alone with the café. He wipes down his bar, cleans the glasses, takes out the trash, and when everything is in excellent order, he locks the café door, taking the key with him. Pierre has had one last time as a barman, one last existence. After that, he avoids going home as long as possible. Once home, unable to read and unable to think of anything else to do, he goes to bed.

Fabre’s use of description, of monologue, and of Pierre’s relationship with objects fleshes out the novel, making it more than a “slice-of-life” work. Through his descriptions of the lights of the café, the street lights, the dead leaves on Isabelle’s Audi, and the poorly pruned sycamore trees, he creates strong visual impressions that give the novel qualities of a painting. Pierre’s monologues, recounting his thoughts during the three days that drastically change his life, give the novel a philosophical depth. Pierre is really trying to figure out what life is about, why things happen as they do. It is in Pierre’s thoughts, as he attempts to deal with his life, that Fabre emphasizes the helplessness of the human condition. Here, also, he examines the problem of loneliness and the difficulty of lasting commitment to other human beings. Pierre was married but soon divorced. All of his love affairs have been of short duration. This does not mean that Pierre is lacking in compassion for other people. He tries to help the distraught Isabelle by taking her to dinner and listening to her talk about her life with her husband; he is concerned for Sabrina, a single mother with children. He likes Amadée and his regular customers. However, Pierre refers to the regulars at his bar as people he listens to but does not know. He remains always separated from them. His only enduring friendship has been with Roger, a fellow barman who is possibly a reflection of Pierre.

Pierre’s strongest relationships are not with people: His apartment, his possessions within it, and his housekeeping tasks occupy a good part of his time when he is not at Le Cercle. He wants things a certain way; the condition of his surroundings is always important to him. The café Le Cercle is as much a character in the book as Amadée or Sabrina. For Pierre, wiping down his bar is an essential part of his existence. He is a barman and a barman takes care of his bar.

Pierre’s dream adds to the texture of the novel. His dream life is almost always frightening to him. He would like to dream about the beautiful young woman he noticed outside of the café, but instead he dreams about Le Cercle locked with its tile floor covered with dead leaves. Inside he glimpses Sabrina and her children, who flee when they see him at the door. He does not like the dream and fears its return.

However, the novel is neither morbid nor pessimisticit simply portrays life as it is for an ordinary man such as Pierre. Fabre adds a tone of levity to his novel in the many comments Pierre makes as he accepts how things are and his inability to change them.

The overlapping or folding structure of the work makes it seem longer than its 117 pages. Events and observations constantly trigger memories in Pierre’s mind, and he takes the reader to earlier moments in his life and to past experiences in such a way that there is almost another story within the novel. Pierre’s life unfolds along with the story of the search for the boss.

The novel is the first of Fabre’s works to be published in an English translation. It has been successful among American readers and critics, elciting hopes that more of his novels will be translated into English.