They Stole Crosses

THE SECRET GAME (187 pp.)--Francois Boyer--Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

To write convincingly about a child's reaction to violence is one real test of a novelist's skill. A few novelists have done it surpassingly well, notably Englishman Richard Hughes in his classic High Wind in Jamaica. Frenchman Francois Boyer, a 30-year-old movie scenarist, does not match his predecessors in The Secret Game, but his story is so ingenious that it obscures the fact that he does not entirely succeed.

Nine-year-old Paulette had seen her parents killed when Nazi planes machine-gunned a refugee column in France. Death was an intimate presence: a "big wolf" in the sky, cries and confusion on the road, then corpses pushed into ditches.

When Paulette wandered off the road to the quiet hamlet of Saint-Faix, she was given shelter by a peasant family. They made a home for her, but they could not understand how much she needed warmth and reassurance. Only Michel, the youngest in the family, understood her fierce affection for dead little animals. It was he who suggested their secret game. They buried dead moles, rats and lizards beneath improvised crosses, a ceremony which somehow consoled Paulette. To get more crosses, they began raiding the cemetery and the church. With covetous eyes, they examined the crosses, trying to decide which cross would best fit which animal. One tall stone cross seemed just right for a giraffe.

The game ended when Michel climbed to the top of the church to pull down its shaky cross. He fell, but only Paulette saw him fall. A little later, his family stumbled across the children's miniature cemetery, with its crosses labeled "Mole," "Rat," "Lizard," "3 Ladybirds," "15 Ants," "6 Flies." They did not think to look for Michel under the largest cross of all, the one from the church, where Paulette had buried him before wandering away.

Author Boyer has hit upon a powerful idea for suggesting the havoc that war can leave in children's minds, but he has hardly done more than suggest it. Writing with an economy that amounts to sparseness, he comes closer to achieving a fine scenario than a fine novel.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.