BOOK REVIEW / Bookshop Window: My parents - Herve Guibert, Tr Liz Heron: Serpent's Tail, pounds 8.99.

Another posthumous publication from the French writer who died of Aids in 1991 and who has fleshed out his life and death for us in books such as To The Friend Who Did Not Save My Life. This one is livelier than the others: Guibert cuts his childhood down into a series of almost purely physical montages. They all ring true, though the narrator's character is so repulsive it's hard to go all the way with him in the search for lost time. The overwhelming reliance on the formless ebb and flow of sensation lets Guibert off the hook, away from any demanding consideration of his relationship with his parents.