A long filament hung from her lips, she had to cough it away… She watched the dabs of mucus sliding slowly towards the drainpipe leaving glossy, viscous tracks behind them, like snails.

Among the others in his circle is his acolyte, Boris (who is having an affair with the nightclub entertainer Lola); the young student from a wealthy family, Ivich, facing her final exams and worried (with good reason) about failing, uncertain about what she can do when the inevitable happens; and the more established Daniel (who would also have the money Mathieu needs, but isn't willing to give it to him). Ivich gave a jump and uttered a piercing scream, which she promptly stifled by putting her hand to her mouth.

But the chief merit of the book lies in the fact that Sartre has put his story ahead of his theme, and whatever abstract ideas of Existentialism he has expressed, he has converted them into the concrete form of dramatic situation. He’s filled with causticity and scathing asides which, naturally, includes his scheming on how he can interfere with everyone’s lives.

One of the people Mathieu hits up for money is his older brother, Jacques, who went through his own dissolute stage ("he had dallied with surrealism", among other things) but now is entirely prim and proper. Again, this is central to existentialism’s atheistic outlook – we are free agents in the world who decide our fate, with the idea being to live as morally sound a life as possible. Here, Boris refuses to believe that Lola is still alive; and, when Mathieu finally persuades him, Boris refuses to accept it. Perhaps you haven’t in fact reached the age of reason, it’s really a moral age… perhaps I’ve got there sooner than you have. This is, essentially, all there is to the plot, but from the subsequent carnage it creates, Mathieu is forced to swallow his pride and wheel and deal with his friends, such as the imposing Daniel, who clearly delights in wreaking havoc in other peoples’ lives for the sake of it.

He first tries his wealthy friend Sarah, although bumps into the communist Brunet in the process (who later invites Mathieu to join the party, but he declines). Jacque says he is being childish, he is refusing to grow up – he has now reached the age of reason and he must choose to be an adult, to settle down, to marry, to accept that he has a nice government job (as a tenured professor at the Lycée Buffon) a nice government pension and a nice obliging mistress: in what way is he any kind of rebel or non-conformist?

The Age of Reason is the first volume in a trilogy, and that work should presumably be judged as a whole; nevertheless, it's not a great start. The thought of manipulating his ‘friend’ amuses the cynical Daniel (‘When Mathieu adopted a Quakerish attitude, Daniel hated him’, p. While he ponders these ‘moral’ quandaries Mathieu hangs out with Ivich, kid sister of Boris Serguine, one of his pupils.

We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure. Boris, meanwhile, is having an affair with Lola Montero, the ageing (well, 40 makes her ageing in this book) nightclub singer.

But you're free now", Mathieu is told when all is said and done -- but he's not satisfied, of course: "Pah ! When he does nothing of the sort but instead proudly brandishes the money for the abortion, Marcelle’s face falls, she is ashen, she says, ‘So that’s what you think of me’.I am pretty much still sitting here in awe at the complexity of Sartre's understanding of human motivation. They exist to nudge you towards discovering their full attributes, as I deliberately leave out many chapters and happenings – so by reading this review and learning the story, it shouldn’t much spoil your trip through the novel. I didn't read this as an exemplification of Sartre's philosophy, but rather as a study of the philosophy of the characters in the story. There was in that face an intriguing, almost volutptuous humility that evoked a mean desire to hurt her, to crush her with shame.