Weird. Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy is seriously weird. Structurally so. It’s as if he has taken a 3 or 4 page short story, photocopied it multiple times, then cut the pages up between paragraphs before throwing them up in the air and then entering them into the ‘narrative’ however they fell.
Consequently there is a great deal of repetition, and the story flits between timeframes, episodes – often multiple times on the same page. It’s like trying to see the picture presented by a jigsaw – but while all the pieces are still in a mess in the box. Or the unsorted tiles on a mosaic. The responsibility is on the reader to piece together what actually happened – which is made all the more difficult because the third person who is clearly somewhere in the narrative never actually appears. And there is one climactic moment which we only see once and it isn’t at the climax of the story (as presented to us).
As you may gather, you’ll either love or hate this. I found it fascinating and intriguing. But did I like it? The jury’s out…
Ian Gouge - Writer 