A Monkey in Winter

On the coast of Normandy is a small resort town by the name of Tigreville, largely undistinguished by abnormal activity since D-Day, its beaches bordered by villas in decay. The somnolent existence of its inhabitants is broken only by their nightly visits to the local bistros, and by the doings of the Tigreville Snipers, the local football team.

To Tigreville's Hotel Stella, run by Albert Quentin, himself a reformed alcoholic, and his wife, Suzanne, comes Gabriel Fouquet--mysteriously out of season--a 35-year-old newcomer, a stranger. Why is he there? the town gossips wonder. No one knows. But before the days of his stay are over, he and Quentin will have joined forces over a glass of cognac and there begun an alcoholic sortie of a dimension unknown to Tigrevillians and of a wildness unparalleled in recent fiction.

(from the dust jacket)