How does one best assess and describe Alain Robbe-Grillet's 1965 novel, "La Maison de Rendez-vous"? By first noting that the author wrote the screenplay for "Last Year at Marienbad," an enigmatic, surrealistic movie released in 1961 and that he also pioneered the mid-century "new novel" ('nouveau roman' and 'nouvelle vague,' in French) school of fiction. "La Maison de Rendez-vous" takes place in Hong Kong in the early years of British colonial rule, with the most significant action played out during entertainments at the Blue Villa of Lady Ava as well as on the streets of the city. Character development is not a focus of the book, nor is any attempt to probe the nature of Anglo-Chinese relations. In their place is a rather unique challenge to the reader to determine the nature of reality, but the puzzle to be solved will be unfamiliar to readers accustomed to police procedurals or the long history of classic mysteries.
Some features of this novel imitate those of "Last Year at Marienbad." Sentences are repeated in unbroken sequence, and actions are often repeated at intervals. Within the Blue Villa, a small theater presents dramas that are easy to confuse with reality, and detailed descriptions of the villa's rooms and positioning of people read as if Robbe-Grillet were offering a screenplay with staging directions. Even more striking is Robbe-Grillet's use of time. Numerous authors feature flashbacks in their novels, but they generally assume that time moves in a linear, always-forward looking numerically-sequenced manner. Not so Robbe-Grillet's time. It would be easy to describe this manipulation of time as having made it circular or folded-back on itself, but the author's intent may well have been more complex than this. Further disorienting is the fact that the narrator describes the great majority of what occurs in the present tense.
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