The complete review's Review:

Jacques the Fatalist is a rambling novel presented largely in dialogue-form, with the author popping up occasionally to add his two cents to the proceedings. The dialogue-partners are Jacques and his Master, and while the novel has them have a few real-time adventures along the way (and at the end of their journey) more space is taken up with Jacques' story-telling (though the Master gets in a few episodes as well). But even here, the stories are not related in straightforward form: the Master wants to hear specific things (such as about Jacques' love-life) and frequently interrupts and redirects matters -- and the intrusive author also pushes things along, especially when they threaten to get too tedious.

This approach gives Jacques the Fatalist a very modern feel; it's no surprise that Milan Kundera is such a big fan of the work and author (and, in fact, adapted it for the stage). The playful aspect is appealing enough, but Diderot handles it particularly well: it feels fresh even now, when we're used to all such games (and at the time of its publication must have seemed all the more impressive).

The author is playing with the genre -- and even as he lets the reader know it, manages to write an engaging enough tale (and series of tales) to make the reader forget it again. His suggestions and winks give occasional pause, but then the story sucks the reader right back in:

It is quite obvious that I am not writing a novel since I am neglecting those things which a novelist would not fail to use. The person who takes what I write for the truth might perhaps be less wrong than the person who takes it for a fiction.

Nowadays, the neglect Diderot means is not as obvious -- novelists are more likely to do just as Diderot does -- but for his day he certainly was not true to the form. There are other examples from the past two or three centuries, but this is a particularly fine one of what we recognise as a modern novel -- an example of what the novel has evolved into since Diderot's times.

Fatalist Jacques is a talkative sort -- a mania apparently the result of having spent his childhood literally gagged. The France of that times apparently isn't one that appreciates talk: even once he leaves his home and all the enforced quiet he can't seem to hold a job until he finds the Master, as: "I was a born talker and all those people wanted silence." Fortunately, he's come across the right employer: "I have got precisely the vice that suits you", he notes, as the Master wants to hear Jacques carry on and on.

There's some adventure along the way, both in the present (they have horse problems, and women problems, and a few dangerous and awkward encounters) and in the stories, and there's also a philosophical bent to the narrative. Jacques is smart but no academic, and his wisdom tends to be presented along with the stories (which serve as examples) -- no real major moral issues and the like, but a good deal of commonsensical stuff (if often with a twist or two), all coloured by Jacques' unsurprising fatalism.

Despite speaking steadily and constantly, like many -- including, presumably, most authors --, Jacques is frustrated by his inability to communicate exactly what he wants to:

Ah, if I only knew how to speak the way I think, but it was written up above that I would have things in my head and the words wouldn't come to me.

But the pair are amusing conversation partners, and Diderot a good storyteller. Jacques the Fatalist is very good fun, and well worthwhile.

Jacques and his master were on a journey whose purpose and destination were unknown to the narrator. The latter even scolded the inquisitive reader for wanting to know such irrelevant information as how the travelers had met, what their names were, where they had come from, or where they were going. Instead, the narrator merely informed the reader that, as the novel opened, the master was not saying anything, and that Jacques was repeating, for his master’s benefit, the fatalist creed he had learned from his captain. Everything that happens to us on earth, good or bad, Jacques explained, is foreordained, written on the great scroll "up above." As an appropriate example, his captain would always add that every bullet shot in battle had someone’s name on it. Jacques illustrated the truth of the captain’s doctrine by noting the interconnected chain of events in his own life: He had joined the army as the result of a quarrel with his father; soon after, in his first battle, he received "his" bullet, which shattered his knee; and had it not been for that bullet, he would probably never have fallen in love. That remark aroused the master’s curiosity, and he asked his servant to tell him the story of his loves to make their journey more interesting. The telling of that story, like the recurrent discussions of the doctrine of fatalism, constitutes a running theme throughout the novel. During the entire eight days of travel recounted in the novel, Jacques kept trying to advance his story, but he was constantly interrupted and ultimately prevented from finishing it. The narrator provided a third running theme, periodically interrupting the narrative, as he did at the very outset, to engage the reader in discussions about storytelling in general and about the truth and morality of each story or interpolated tale that came up during the journey. The narrator’s account of the journey was frequently interrupted by unexpected events, by digressions in dialogue between Jacques and his master and between the narrator and the reader, and by the telling of apparently unrelated tales volunteered by individuals they encountered on their journey. Some of the tales were brief but bizarre, such as the account of the relationship between Jacques’ captain and his best friend, a relationship based on their mutual passion for fighting duels with each other whenever possible. Others were more elaborate and often comical, such as the story of a Monsieur Gousse who, wishing to live with his mistress unimpeded by his wife, devised a scheme by which he brought suit against himself to force the release of his furniture from his own home; he lost the suit and ended in jail. Still other tales depicted the corruption in public morals, as in the tale of Father Hudson, a priest in charge of a monastery, who was considered by everyone in that town an excellent administrator of his institution but who successfully and in secret conducted a life of debauchery involving many women of the town. The longest tale was told by the hostess of the Inn of the Great Stag, where Jacques and his master were obliged to stay for two nights because of inclement weather.

The hostess, who was of peasant origin and exceptionally skillful as a storyteller, described her tale as that of a "strange marriage." The marriage was brought about by an elaborate plot of vengeance, patiently worked out by a widow, Mme de la Pommeraye, against the man who had jilted her, the Marquis des Arcis. Mme de la Pommeraye bribed a woman and her attractive daughter, whose circumstances had forced them both into a life of prostitution, to appear under assumed names in respectable company, where the Marquis des Arcis would be sure to make their acquaintance. The widow so maneuvered events that the smitten Marquis eagerly agreed to marry the daughter. Thereupon, Mme de la Pommeraye took her vengeance by informing the Marquis of the true background of the woman he had married. Though shocked and angry atfirst, the Marquis decided that he could be happy with his new wife. That decision left Mme de la Pommeraye feeling cheated of her revenge. During the last two days of the eight-day journey, Jacques made rapid progress in the story of his loves, including the ribald tale of how he lost his virginity. He finally told of his encounter with Denise, who nursed him after his knee surgery and with whom he fell in love. During those two days, the master told Jacques the sad story of his one great love, whom he had lost to a rival. At last they came to a village, where the master wished to visit the son of the woman he had once wooed and lost. As the master dismounted from his horse, he fell to the ground. Jacques admitted that he had purposely loosened the strap, causing his master to fall. The incident led to the final debate between Jacques and his master on the question of fatalism and free will. In an unexpected outburst of violence, the master’s victorious rival emerged from the house where his son was living and abruptly challenged the master to a duel. The rival was killed, the master fled, and Jacques was taken to jail as a material witness. Jacques’ final reflections, in jail, were about the prospect of marrying his beloved Denise, followed by uneasy speculation as to whether he could escape the likely fate of all husbands; that of becoming a cuckold. Jacques then fell asleep, reminding himself of the futility of such speculation, since whatever befell him would have been written "up above."

Jacques's key philosophy is that everything that happens is "written up above" ("tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut"), a "great scroll" which is unrolled a little bit at a time, on which all events, past and future, are written. Yet Jacques still places value on his actions; he is not a passive character. Critics such as J. Robert Loy have characterized Jacques's philosophy as not fatalism but determinism.[1]

The book is full of contradictory characters and other dualities. One story tells of two men in the army who were so much alike that, though they were the best of friends, they could not stop dueling and wounding each other. Another concerns Father Hudson, an intelligent and effective reformer of the church, who is privately the most debauched character in the book. Even Jacques and his master transcend their apparent roles, as Jacques proves, in his insolence, that his master cannot live without him, and therefore it is Jacques who is the master, and the master who is the servant.

"Jacques the Fatalist is Diderot's answer to the problem of existence. If human beings are determined by their genes and their environment, how can they claim to be free to want or do anything? Where are Jacques and his Master going? Are they simply occupying space, living mechanically until they die, believing erroneously that they are in charge of their Destiny? Diderot intervenes to cheat our expectations of what fiction should be and do, and behaves like a provocative, ironic, and unfailingly entertaining master of revels which finally show why Fate is not to be equated with doom." "In the introduction to this new translation, David Coward explains the philosophical basis of Diderot's fascination with Fate and shows why Jacques the Fatalist pioneers techniques of action which, two centuries on, novelists still regard as experimental."--Jacket.