The Enchanted Clock: A Novel

In the Palace of Versailles there is a fabulous golden clock, made for Louis XV by the king�s engineer, Claude-Sim�on Passemant. The astronomical clock shows the phases of the moon and the movements of the planets, and it will tell time�hours, minutes, seconds, and even sixtieths of seconds�until the year 9999. Passemant�s clock brings the nature of time into sharp focus in Julia Kristeva�s intricate, poetic novel The Enchanted Clock.Nivi Delisle, a psychoanalyst and magazine editor, nearly drowns while swimming off the �le de R�; the astrophysicist Theo Passemant fishes her out of the water. They become lovers. While Theo wonders if he is descended from the clockmaker Passemant, Nivi�s son Stan, who suffers from occasional comas, develops a passion for the remarkable clock at Versailles. Soon Nivi is fixated on its maker. But then the clock is stolen, and when a young writer for Nivi�s magazine mysteriously dies, the clock is found near his body. The Enchanted Clock combines past and present, jumping back and forth between points of view and across eras from eighteenth-century Versailles to the present day. Its stylistically inventive narrative voices bring both immediacy and depth to our understanding of consciousness. Nivi�s life resembles her creator�s in many respects, coloring Kristeva�s customary erudition with autobiographical poignancy. Part detective mystery, part historical fiction, The Enchanted Clock is a philosophically and linguistically multifaceted novel, full of poetic ruminations on memory, love, and the transcendence of linear time. It is one of the most illuminating works of one of France�s great writers and thinkers.… (more)