Books: Fox into Lady

SYLVA (256 pp.)—Vercors—Putnam ($4).

Albert Richwick, bachelor and gentleman farmer, was strolling near his garden one day when a pack of hounds chased an exhausted fox into his hedge. Suddenly "there was no fox. But protruding from the hedge, on the ground, a pair of bare legs. They were kicking. The rest of the body, caught in the hedge and slashed by thorns, was trying to push through...It was a woman."

What happens to a fox become woman is the substance of this evocative new book by the French novelist who calls himself Vercors. The author...