Armand

Emmanuel Bove's "Armand" follows the sensitive title character and the people in his orbit over the course of a day. There is Jeanne, Armand's wealthy lover and keeper; his awkward and penniless old friend Lucien; and Lucien's younger sister Marguerite, who is as clumsy and poor as her brother. Bove's gift for nuance has been compared to that of Proust, and in "Armand" his writing is at its most powerful. From noting the way Marguerite enters a room "without pushing the door too far open, because she must have been used to slipping in and out," to interpreting the subtlety of every gesture, Bove manages to plumb the emotional depths of his characters through exacting observation of their finely textured surfaces.