Unconscious and vulnerable youth

Early twentieth century. Parisian bourgeoisie teenagers and young graduates embark on impulse in life and try to take their independence under the guidance and influence of mentors disorders intentions (Edouard Molinier, Passavant, Strouvilhou). They pay into the counterfeit money, false friendship, false love, false literary fame. The opportunity to give a Gide sometimes amoral vision of the family, criticism of religion, of lhomosexualité complacent.

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.