Lee Berman, a young writer of little talent, must have thought this flagrant act of plagiarism would go unnoticed. He didn't even bother renaming the story he stole.
"The Three Bells" by Pierre Mouffetard, one of the towering figures twentieth century French letters, is a story of multiple dimensions: the small bistro in the eleventh arrondissement of Paris; the four beautiful women (one secretly pregnant); the American tourist (vanished) and his innocent (and pregnant) sweetheart who, torn between the advice of her friends, to get in touch or forget, saves the life of the fat stuttering American diplomat (by the Heimlich maneuver) in the presence of his fat lisping wife.
"The Three Bells" by Lee Berman features all these characters, and some of the action of the original, except that everything in this story is colorless, insipid, superficial, written in a stilted, almost broken English. Berman disappoints his readers in multiple ways, but the principal miscarriage of "The Three Bells" lies in the portrayal (one-dimensional, ludicrous) of Eve, the heroine. In Mouffetard's original version, Eve is a complex character of intriguing psychological depth, a cross between Madonna and Maradona. Berman's Eve is nothing but a neighborhood floozy. As for Peter (Pierre?), the father of Eve's child, Peter whose body is found (in the original story) at the bottom of the Seine, Berman disfigures and blurs this character unto extinction.
"The Three Bells" in short is little more than an dishonest and abortive attempt to appropriate the work of a true original. Berman's only claim to fame is that he managed, quite beautifully, to besmirch a masterpiece of world literature.
