IN OUR STRANGE GARDENS

Given the events of the last two months, Quint's odd little parable about the often transitory and unpredictable nature of good and evil in wartime situations seems especially poignant and compelling. The premise of the story is simple: the son of a Resistance hero tells the story of his father and his father's cousin, a pair of Frenchmen who blow up the local generator during WWII and then find themselves taken into custody by the Germans as random hostages; no one realizes they are the true culprits. The Nazis throw them into a pit with a pair of their innocent comrades and tell them that one of them will be killed unless someone confesses to the crime. Their strange dilemma is rendered even more bizarre by the behavior of the guard, who alternately taunts them and gives them scraps of food as they struggle to determine a course of action. Quint renders his narrative in a deceptively simple and straightforward fashion, making no attempt to judge the actions of his protagonists. The solution to their dilemma is an intriguing surprise, but Quint delivers the real knockout punch to his little morality play in his revelation of the fate of the narrator; readers won't forget it. (Dec. 4)

Forecast:This extremely short book—Quint's tale is really a long short story—is bulked up by the inclusion of the entire French text. As an international bestseller, the book has a proven track record, but readers on these shores may balk at the cost-content ratio.