Obviously, it’s not easy for an atheist to talk about a series of books whose main subject is religious conversion. In the same way, it’s hard to imagine someone who has never been in love, someone to whom love is completely alien, taking an interest in a novel all about that particular passion. In the absence of any real emotional identification, what an atheist slowly comes to feel when confronted with Durtal’s spiritual adventures—with the series of spiritual retreats, followed by eruptions of divine grace, that make up Huysmans’s last three books—is, unfortunately, boredom.
