Don Juan: His Own Version

Peter Handke's short, strange novel is a little too fond of its own strangeness for my taste. Its abstract, dreamlike sections and labored tentativeness are as apt to induce nausea as elation. And yet there are fine descriptive passages and a poignancy to Don Juan's sadness at the loss of his child. "What drove him was nothing but his inconsolability and his sorrow. To transport his sorrow through the world and transmit it to the world."