In the Palace of Versailles there is a fabulous golden clock, made for Louis XV by the king's engineer, Claude-Simeon Passemant. The astronomical clock shows the phases of the moon and the movements of the planets, and it will tell time--hours, minutes, seconds, and even sixtieths of seconds--until the year 9999. Passemant's clock brings the nature of time into sharp focus in Julia Kristeva's intricate, poetic novel The Enchanted Clock.

Nivi Delisle, a psychoanalyst and magazine editor, nearly drowns while swimming off the Ile de Re; the astrophysicist Theo Passemant fishes her...