Book of Nights

Stilted language aspiring to fairy-tale simplicity combines with ridiculous plot developments struggling to be fantastical to sink this French antiwar novel. The Peniels, a Flanders family living on a river barge through the Franco-Prussian War, WW I and WW II, suffer a series of misfortunes. Inasmuch as the narrative can be said to have a central character, it is Victor-Flandrin Peniel (also known as Night-of-gold-Wolf-face, because of a yellow spot in his eye), whose slightly demented father hacks off two of his fingers at age five to ensure he'll never be drafted. During the course of his life, Victor-Flandrin buries four wives and sires 15 children, none of whom seem to particularly interest the author. The breadth of Germain's narrative range can be judged by her use of the phrase ``quince and vanilla'' five times in 40 pages to describe a smell or taste. This is the first of her five novels to be published in English, and the translation does her no favors; the prose is as awkward and displeasing as the redundant imagery. (Nov.)