Clay

Bouysse (Wind Drinkers) serves up an evocative tale of romance and horror in rural France during WWI. Drafted into the French army, Victor Lary leaves behind his wife, Mathilde, and their 15-year-old son, Joseph, at the family farm. Though Joseph worries about his father, he adapts to being the man of the house, and he forgets his anxiety when he meets Anna, an attractive teenager who’s staying with her uncle Vallete, the Larys’ neighbor, while her own father is off to war. Joseph and Anna keep their burgeoning relationship secret from the adults, particularly because they’re afraid of Vallette, a “violent man, snide and envious,” who is unfit for military service because of a deformed hand. Vallette more than justifies the suspicion and fear he arouses, as he engages in bestiality and lusts after his niece. The villain is strictly a one-dimensional character, and the narrative offers few surprises on its way toward a grisly climax, but Bouysse vividly portrays the pastoral scenery while sustaining a sense of foreboding (a moth drinking nectar from a flower is described as “a tiny drunkard powerless to abandon the source of its pleasure”). Readers will find much to admire. (May)