his brisk erotic pastoral can wear out its welcome unless you pause to marvel at the sentences, among the best by a contemporary American novelist.
“A geography of favored streets is forming for me while I sleep,” writes the narrator, whose friend Dean (at times Jimmy Dean-esque), falls hard for a Frenchwoman. The action (the fast tourism of towns, sex, and much good food) takes place mostly in rural France of the mid-1960s. Salter delivers an urbanely erotic road-trip for lovers of inspired writing.