250 Novels

In a sense the story is actually secondary to the literary work of Gailly.  The chapters are set out in different phases, which relate to the different parts of the relationship between the two protagonists.  Marguerite Muir, the dentist and hobby-pilot, who gets her hand-bag snatched in Paris, and Georges the older-man who finds her wallet in the gutter next to his car.  The narrative follows the internal thought process of both characters, sometimes stopping mid sentence, as if interrupted. At first Marguerite is almost chased by Georges, who behaves with some latent violence, only then does the stalker become the stalked as passions are born from chance encounters.  Both are not certain that they want to continue down this inevitable road.  As Gailly writes:

“Elle n’avait pas prévu qu’on lui volerait son sac à la sortie du magasin. Encore moins que le voleur jetterait le contenu dans un parking. Quant à Georges, s’il avait pu se douter, il ne se serait pas baissé pour le ramasser”.

This is a very Franco/French book, exploring human passions in a light comical way, but juxtaposing this to the requirements of a “normal” bourgeois life between Georges and his wife Suzanne.  The latter almost becomes complicit in the affairs between Marguerite and George, which again is a very French way of dealing with a cheating husband.  This Novel was made into a film called “Les Herbes Folles” by the Veteran Director Alain Resnais at the age of 87.  An expensive production for a Franco/Italian co-production, like the book, the film failed to make any impression outside of France.  It might be because of the comical ending involving flies undone in Marguerite’s plane.