AS NIGHT FOLLOWS DAY
by Pierre Moinot & translated by Jody Gladding with Elizabeth Deshays
In this accomplished 1998 novel (the latest from a veteran French author whose large oeuvre remains almost completely untranslated), a pair of inexplicable murders unravels the calm of a small French village, setting its occupants at first on edge, and eventually at one another’s throats. Moinot draws us in with a series of sharply etched characterizations, notably that of a preadolescent rural youth whose confusions and misinterpretations subtly embody the vulnerability of his neighbors (and hence, by implication, of us all). A terrific little morality tale from a writer whom we really ought to know more about.