Molinier wrote a novel called The counterfeiters, this is also a book about the writing on the novel in the making, the difficulty of literary production. Thus Gide takes us back and forth not only between the protagonists but between the positions of narrator and dauteur, looking to write and sometimes taking us to witness, as if he found the characters with us (see for example Chapter 7) . This gives a strange narrative structure, slightly offset.
In the end, this is a nice book to read, with lots of finesse characters, formulas and beautiful, intelligent and deep sentence on humanity.