Cervantes

Little is known about the life of the father of the modern novel. Like his contemporary Shakespeare, Cervantes fascinates because he is approached most closely through his writings. Here a professor at the University of Caen, in Normandy, offers a collage-like portrait, separating what is certain about Cervantes from the imagined and the plausible, placing him into his milieu, Spain's Golden Age, in the effort to discover ``that ever-present absentee whose unmistakable voice we always recognize among a thousand others.'' Unfortunately, much of the book is speculative, raising more questions than answers. Canavaggio mixes tenses, sometimes using the past, present and future in one paragraph; the prose, while exuberant, is rambling. This is an ambitious, adulatory biography. (Mar.)