The short stories in this collection all comprise unvarnished language, a smooth unemphatic narrative, a striking choice of words, and depictions that assume a distinctive intensity. As L’Alphabet du matin (Morning alphabet) clearly demonstrates, the power of words fascinated Alice Rivaz from her early childhood. She gleans the entire essence of her short stories from simple single facts or events. In just a few pen strokes, she depicts the lives of the poor and the elderly, and their profound loneliness. She also denounces the indifference and marginalisation inflicted on them.

François Kasbi, literary critic for Esprit magazine (December 2015), understood the plight of these abused and scorned characters and had this to say about the collection :

[…] The dense, intimate, hushed short stories in Sans alcool (Temperance)– the opportunity and alibi here for this evocation– reflect her sensitive manner and encapsulate most of the topics, both universal and ordinary, that preoccupy her: passion, the quest for love as an impossible ideal, solitude, failure, misunderstandings between people, growing old, music (she was an outstanding pianist), everyday life lived every single day, the world of the humble and of those living on the fringes, social injustice – essentially the underside of the bourgeois setting of most of her stories. Her prism: The inner life that imbues each of her short stories with stunning intensity and the semblance of a picture deprived of anything picturesque. Alice Rivaz evokes images: In a mere few pages, she sets a mood, creates an atmosphere, “tells of beings”: [...] We find her radiant, prophetic, illuminated by an inner light that is akin to clairvoyance – upright. Alice Rivaz, a French-speaking Swiss? A naturalised human being...

The evocative power of these short stories has certainly contributed to their continued success.