Nobel Surprise Winner

THE THIBAULTS--Roger Martin du Gard --Viking ($3).

In a small, dingy Paris room, where dregs of a stormy sunset filtered through the window, a young physician named Antoine Thibault found three people: a doctor, younger and more inexperienced than himself, a curious, silent, red-headed woman named Rachel, a little girl who was dying. Antoine was no surgeon, but incapable of taking thought without action, he decided to operate at once. He cleared the plates off the table, placed the child on it. He stripped the shade from the lamp. Sweating, exalted, anxious and yet confident, he thought, when the preparations went well: "I'm a wonderful fellow." But when the thunder rolled as he made the incision, he reflected: "A bit previous, the applause." He finished, triumphant--then saw that the child seemed to have stopped breathing.

Hours later, Antoine sat down on the floor, rested his back against the wall. The little girl was still alive. The younger doctor was treating him with awed deference. Rachel's eyes glinted with admiration. Antoine had learned what being a great doctor meant. But sweating, dirty, stupefied with weariness, Antoine was only conscious of his overwhelming desire for Rachel, whom he had never seen before and did not expect to see again.

The biggest scene in The Thibaults, this one of Antoine's medical and amorous initiation, is also an excellent illustration of Roger Martin du Card's art. It shows his handling of mature, accomplished characters, his mastery of suspense, his trick of giving his characters homely, human reflections at exalted moments in their lives. Unique among French novels, The Thibaults tells a frank, sometimes scandalous story with deceptive innocence, makes the most hackneyed theme of modern fiction--the breakup of a family--fresh, unexpected, unusual.

The first two volumes of The Thibaults, published in the U. S. in 1926, traced the lives of Antoine and his younger brother, Jacques, to the threshold of their careers. The present volume (which includes a new translation of the first two) carries them on, shows Jacques, emotional, unstable, imaginative, developing from a runaway schoolboy to writer, to revolutionist, while Antoine, sober, good-natured, plodding, grows in understanding as his professional skill increases. He falls in love with Rachel and finally, through the haze of the lies she tells him about herself, begins to understand her sulphurous, vicious, pathetic, vice-ridden past and future. Still to be translated is Summer 1914 (a book as long as Gone With the Wind), which carries the fate of Jacques and Antoine to the War.

For writing The Thibaults, taciturn, 58-year-old Roger Martin du Card, then almost unknown, won the 1937 Nobel surprise. With this much of his masterwork before them, U. S. readers may well feel that the award was justified.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.