This is the fourth and last book in the series about an artist in the world of haute couture: Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte. I have not read the previous three, but had no trouble with picking up the story in Nue. Thankfully the heroine is referred to as plain Marie in this book and her story is pieced together by the narrator the unnamed admirer and lover of Marie. The story is told in several set piece situations. The first is an outrageous fashion show in Japan where Marie has designed a dress that clings to the body of her model like a second skin and is the colour of honey. She arranges to have a swarm of bees follow the model down the catwalk. We then find the narrator alone in his Paris apartment after enjoying a holiday with Marie in Elba. He spends two months looking out of the window waiting for Marie to phone him. The narrator remembers an art exhibition celebrating Marie in Japan, to which he had not been invited and how he climbed onto the roof and peered down at the gathering through a porthole like window. Then he finally receives a phone call and meets Marie in a run down Paris cafe on a wet winters night in the city and then agrees that night to go back to Elba with her for a funeral.

These incidents are described in some detail with the author intent on providing an atmosphere which connects them to each other. I enjoyed the writing which has a dream-like quality to it. It has the feel of being written by a person in love who understands that he must play his part in the game of love, without fully understanding the rules. It is a waiting game and like the diaphanous honey coloured dress, nothing must be done to spoil the overall effect. I was carried away by the writing in this short novel which has a timely resolution. I need not read the preceding three to understand the story, but I would like to for the quality of the writing. 4 stars. ( )

A three part review of Toussaint's 'Marie' novels, excluding the first one, 'Making Love,' which is out of print and would have cost me over eighty dollars second hand--here's hoping the current copyright owners will let Dalkey bring it out and keep it in print.

Running Away was a very pleasant surprise; a bit like a Javier Marias novel with most of the thinking taken out. It's all spectacular scenes in wonderfully interesting writing, and ever so slightly silly--the narrator is always out of his depth, and there's nothing he can do about that fact. The book is also perfectly structured; if nothing else, Toussaint's work here will do prospective writers as much or more good than a semester at an MFA. My only complaint--and this will echo through the other volumes--is that when Marie is present, the book becomes less interesting. It's hard to avoid in this one: we start with a near-love scene on a train, move onto the best chase scene I've ever read, and then... well, then Marie is just kind of there, being supposedly irresistable, but actually falling prey to the all-too-common 'Anna Karenina' syndrome, in which the supporting female character is far more interesting and alluring than the 'sexy,' 'mysterious' lead.

The Truth About Marie has scenes as wonderful as RA's, but with the special bonus of actually including Marie and making her ever-so-slightly interesting, provided you can nget interested in a woman who is really sad because her horse has died. I'm sure it's very sad when your horse dies; but really, if you own a horse, and hang out with people who own racehorses, my sympathy levels start pretty low. But the Marias comparison holds here, too: great, silly, but affecting and funny and spectacular scenes, but done much more efficiently (for better and worse).

Naked was, after all that, a bit of a let-down. There are no wonderful scenes here, really; the opening gambits are far too silly and, unfortunately, actually feature Marie, who is... just not interesting. Anna Karenina rules this book, and without the spectacle or intelligence of the second and third books in the series, I can't help thinking that Toussaint just wanted to wrap it up and move on. Alternatively, he wanted to write something beautiful and romantic, but there's more love and tension in any given page of RA's train romance than in this entire book. ( )