Customer Reviews (1)

Pretty good
I thought this book was very good.It's the story of a father and son who shared a passion for a beautiful, amoral woman.Although not filled with a lot of action or dialogue, Mauriac performs a surgical deconstruction ofthe psyche of Raymond, Paul, and Maria Cross, the three main characters,that is fabulous and frightfully revealing.This novel is generallyregarded as the best book of the Nobel Prize winning Mauriac. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

great CLASSIC book -- disregard first reviewer
MILDLY Catholic? How about TOTALLY FREAKING CATHOLIC, because -- guess what -- MAURIAC WAS A TOTALLY DEVOUT FREAKING CATHOLIC. "Slant"? What is this, subterfuge? "Humanize"? JESUS WAS TRULY MAN (AND truly GOD).That's why it's a MYSTERY.What, are we Coptic Monophysite Jansenists, here? Grow up, Gethsemaneboy.Jesus WAS a man (SON OF GOD, SON OF MAN?).Comprehende, compadre? You're about to make me turn into a Nestorian if you keep it up!

Devout, perceptive, moving and helpful!
I picked up a somewhat battered old paperback copy of this in a used book store years ago, and it's been on my shelf ever since.Lately, I've been on a quest to know Jesus better, and to love Him more -- so I thought this would be helpful.Indeed it was.So insightful and beautifully written, so rich and knowing, that I'll have to sit down and read the whole thing over again.Mauriac simply recounts the stories of Christ from the four NT gospels, without adding any significant episodes; he merely wants to bring more depth to what's there, and sometimes attempts to explain why this or that happened or got said.Many of his insights are quite profound, esp. when he ties together passages or makes connections that seem like they should have been obvious.There are many phrases and passages here that I'll commit to memory, like these:"'Lord, I thank Thee that I am like the publican.' Thus prays the pharisee of today!"and his description of sanctification as a restoration of childhood purity, "virgin ground won step by step against a tide of lust and untiring desire."Mauriac, a French novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize, brings a mild Catholic slant to some passages, and occasionally oversteps his bounds in attempting to humanize Christ.But these few pitfalls are easily overlooked in what certainly qualifies as a modern-day devotional masterpiece.How on earth did it go out of print? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

"I can't understand NOT despairing."
This is superficially a novel about a woman, who, after an arranged marriage, attempts to poison her husband, or arranges for him to poison himself or stands knowingly by whilst he does so and then lives the rest of the novel - to crib a phrase from Joyce - "outcast from life's feast."But things, as Therese makes clear in the early goings are far from being so simple: "I shall have to begin from the beginning...But what is the beginning where our actions are concerned?Our destiny, once we begin to try to isolate it, is like those plants which we can never dig up with all their roots intact.Would she find it necessary to go back to her childhood?But even our childhood is, in a sense, a completion."In other words, there are no simple cause-and-effect explanations given here because, likewise, there are no simple cause-and-effect explanations to our lives.Later, in the third part of the novel, Therese contemplates that: "Most people manage to live by deliberately turning away from their memories.For them the skeins they have woven into the texture of their lives cease to exist."Suffice it to say that Therese is not like "most people" and if you are like most readers and prefer a straightforward cause-and-effect narrative, this book will not please.If, on the other hand, you have what, for lack of a better term, I should call a poetic sensibility, then this book by the Nobel-prize winning author Francois Mauriac, will strike a deep chord in you.

In many ways the final, fourth, section of the book is the most affecting, its being the part in which deep, painful love between the sexes is explored most thoroughly through the mutual obsession between Georges and Therese.For Mauriac, as for Proust, to truly, clairvoyantly love is to suffer.Therese tries to ward off Georges' passion but to no avail: "In vain did she display before his young and ardent gaze her high, denuded brow.It was his privilege to see her freed from time's tyranny, liberated from the prison of her flesh.No matter how guilty our passion, it always sees through to the spirit's mystery.A life may have been dragged in the filth of the gutter, but not for a single moment can that fact lessen the splendour which is seen by the eyes of love."

Ultimately, I can see why this book has received some not so great reviews.Throughout, it is none too cheery.It doesn't have the architectonics of the standard narrative.And personality remains constantly elusive.As Georges remembers Therese putting it, " ...one can make the most contrary judgements about the same person, and yet be right - that it is all a question of the way the light falls, and that no one form of lighting is more revealing than another..."But, for readers of poetic sentiment, the book is a dark, if somewhat flawed, delight.

As a postscript, I must add that I was made aware of this book - and author - through reading the recently translated book by Monika Fagerholm, "The American Girl."To my mind, it actually does this book one better!

Interesting but not uplifting
Mauriac is a famous writer, after all he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. And yet, this book was rather a disappointment. Perhaps the translation missed some of the poetic literary flow that is a feature of the French original. Other than for the writing style, the plot seemed a bit "thin" to me, and also less than believable.

The part that was perhaps the most difficult to swallow was in the latter half of the book, when Therese is portrayed as so aged, as if she were 70 years old...and yet, she is only 45!Must be because the times have changed, but 45 is definitely not that old today, so I have a hard time seeing how this woman could have been so transformed into an elderly "granny" of 45...and I also have a hard time seeing how a boy of 20 would be instantly infatuated with such a woman.

Moreover, the inner turmoil of Therese is a bit overblown, rather typical"nineteenth century novel"...it gets a bit boring to mull over her one act over and over. The only really good point I take out of this book is that, as Therese remarks, crimes are comitted every day by people - they are just not the kind of crimes that are punishable by law, as her own was.

One of the great tragic novels
Mauriac, who won the 1952 Nobel Prize for literature, later said of Therese that what she needed was a priest-confessor who truly representedChrist. Since he (at the time of writing the novel) knew of no such person,he could only write of a woman who's passion cried out in futility forfulfillment. The novel takes place in three (maybe four?) vignettes, withTherese first being accused of poisoning her husband, then moving to Parisand becoming a lover of many men, and finally her one truest act of lovetoward a young man who is drawn to both her and to God. The novel mayoffend Christians (since there's no cute or easy ending), offendprotestants (since Mauriac sees Christanity and Catholicism as synonyms),and offend non-believers (Mauriac, for all his literary brilliance, is aJesus freak at heart). I recommend Therese (and Mauriac's other works,incl. the non-listed on Amazon "River of Fire,") most highly.

A BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN BOOK
THIS IS THE STORY OF A WOMAN WHO ATTEMPTS TO POISON HER HUSBAND AND IS ACQUITTED OF THE CRIME, AS THE ATTEMPT FAILS. HER HUSBAND'S TESTIMONY AIDS IN HER ACQUITTAL. THE BOOK DEALS WITH THERESE'S PUNISHMENT BY HER HUSBANDAND DAUGHTER AND HER SUFFERING THROUGHOUT THE REST OF HER LIFE AS SHEATTEMPTS TO LIVE WITH THE VIVID MEMORY OF HER CRIME. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

who's the best 20th Century novelist no one reads anymore?
Setting aside for a moment Mauriac's religious beliefs (and it is fully possible to enjoy his work without sharing his Catholicism) Francois Mauriac was an amazingly skillful writer.His short novels are stylistically conservative-- a straightforward realism rules--and, as far as I know, always comparatively short.But within those formal limits, his ability to offer believable and thoughtful moral dramas without ever lapsing into tendentiousness is remarkable.They have their own sort of gravity, a seriousness that reminds me, oddly enough, of George Eliot, though one of Eliot's works is about as long as 8 or 9 of Mauriac's.Technically what I most admire is Mauriac's ability to represent the passing of time. Even "represent" is too distant a word really; it's as if he captures the sensation of passing time. This edition is a great bargain.It offers a large selection of the complete texts of several important works at a reasonable price. If people 100 years from now are still reading novels they're going to wonder what sort of moronswe were to allow such accomplished works to fall into such relative obscurity.

Great Introduction to 1952 Nobel Prize-winner
Mauriac's writings are beautiful, Christian, and highly charged emotionally, without succumbing to sentimentalism. The French countryside,the bougoise, are both transformed by Mauriac into celestial images ofpiercing love. This work contains four of his best novels, including theabsolutely brilliant "Woman of the Pharisees" and tragically dark"Genetrix." Francois Mauriac is one of the greatest Christianauthors of the 20th or any century, and The Mauriac Reader a superbintroduction to his craft. In short, if you love literature, get this one. ... Read more

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From the Loyola Classics series . . . New editions of acclaimed Catholic novels. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

TIRESOME AND TRITE
I was unable to read more than 60 pages of this novel. I simply tired of the dying rich man's lamenting his unfortunate life and marriage. So what if his marriage was a failure -- his wife had not loved him and had loved a man before him? So what if he felt that he was simply being used by his family ... as the bread-winner? So what if he felt unloved and unworthy of love? These are common problems of life that people face all the time. I thought that the main character's lamentations and hatred of everyone were simply way over the top reactions to his situation! On and on the author went detailing this man's hatred and anger. I just got tired of it, and didn't care about the old dying gentleman! He should have taken action early in his life and solved his problem and not let it fester till on his deathbed. I simply could not feel sympathetic toward the main character, and I really didn't care what happened to him! Sorry. Maybe i should have continued reading, but it all became so repetitious and like a bad soap-opera!

Know Thyself
This is my second Mauriac novel, the first being Woman of the Pharisees, and I enjoyed it immensely.Louis, an aging lawyer, writes a letter to his wife in which he recounts their life together.What begins as a reproach against his family turns into a sort of examination of conscience.The novel ends with a series of exchanges between his grown up children as they offer their own interpretation of his writing.Did Louis amend his ways or were the changes he seemed to be undergoing just another layer of self-deception?Or are the children themselves rationalizing his motives?Mauriac's psychological novel exemplifies the Socratic wisdom that the "unexamined life is not worth living."

One of the greatest pieces of Catholic literature
François Mauriac was a profoundly Catholic novelist. He didn't write pious stories of the Saints or of holy priests and nuns. He wrote stories about people who lived dark, dissolute lives; who hurt others and themselves; but who are offered redemption.

He won the Nobel prize for literature, but in a modern, atheistic France is barely feted.

Le noeud de vipères is, to my mind, his greatest novel. The story of a husband who treats his wife and family with utter disdain, verging on hatred; a man with a blackened heart, but for whom his impending death brings new insights and the possibility of redemption.

It remains one of the greatest books I have ever read.

If you prefer to read it in the original French, le voilà: Le Noeud de Viperes (French Edition)

Eschatological Meditation
I was very grateful when Ignatius Press sent a copy of this book to me to review for Catholicfiction.net. It's truly a "lost masterpiece," as other reviewers have noted. I thought I'd share a truncated version of my original review, as I feel this book deserves to be read by anyone who appreciates deep, if dark, stories with a profound spiritual element. Indeed, "Vipers' Tangle" is structured as a lengthy confession--sometimes a confession, sometimes a polemic, sometimes an invective--from Monsieur Louis, a wealthy retired lawyer of declining health who feels surrounded by a nest of vipers, his family. Yet the vipers' tangle is within as well as without.

The story bears a passing resemblance to Dickens' classic, "A Christmas Carol": a rich, "covetous old sinner" struggles against God's grace to find redemption. But where Dickens' tale had its author's infectious good-humor and largeness of spirit, Vipers' Tangle is an often disturbing journey to the heart of an odious man's mystery. In both stories, however, the ultimate point is that God's grace is accessible to anyone, even the most miserly old sinner.

Through his barrister narrator, a man very difficult character to stomach much less love, Mauriac is making a case of his own. By presenting the reader with a malevolent old man on his deathbed, the author's case is simply this: no one is beyond the reach of God's grace. Without romanticizing Louis, Mauriac expresses the tragedy of a wasted life, the tragedy of a man who has closed himself off from a community of love to wallow in his own despair. Louis is sinned against as well as sinning, but he reserves many of his harshest judgments for himself. He is honest, not hypocritical, and he often turns his cruelty inwards. There is a telling moment when someone asks the local priest if it is permissible to hate the Jews. He replies that "each of us has the right to hate one of Christ's butchers, and one only--himself, but no one else."

"Vipers' Tangle" is an eschatological meditation on the final things, the moment of death. "Apocalypse" is a popular subject for many sensationalistic religious thrillers, but the fact remains that every person's death is his or her own apocalypse--the end of the world. Though unsentimental, Mauriac's vision of one lonely man's last days is hopeful. As Death approaches Louis, the material universe begins to slough away, to diminish in importance as it recedes behind him. The essential drama of Catholic fiction (and why so many great writers are Catholic or have catholic sensibilities) is not whether a character dies--we all die--but whether a character dies in a state of grace. High stakes make for compelling stories, and no stake is higher than the condition of one's eternal soul. Choices in this life have repercussions in the next.

Mauriac asks the reader to bear with his bitter, cruel narrator. He even implicates the reader in Louis' sin-ridden life by suggesting that love requires patience and understanding--a willingness to reach out to souls in torment. "Even the genuinely good cannot, unaided, learn to love. To penetrate beyond the absurdities, the vices, and above, the stupidities of human creatures, one must possess the secret of a love that the world has now forgotten."

A Christian novel unafraid of psychological realism
I am surprised that one of the reviews (referring to the AudioBook version) calls this novel sermonizing.I have read many of the Loyola classics, and I appreciate most of them as pleasantly innocuous novels with Christian themes, but of all that I have read so far, I find Viper's Tangle the most literary and the least didactic.It is also one of the most uncontrived conversion stories that I have ever read.

The protagonist of the story, a miserly old man close to death, tells of his bitterness towards his family and the world with great psychological acumen.He explains to the reader exactly how his hypocritical bourgeouis family has led him to go to great lengths in plotting to disinherit them.He despises his wife's Catholicism, and he offers an incredibly disturbing because realistic portrait of her narrow-mindedness, her failures of charity, even as he freely confesses his own wretched flaws.

What is extraordinary about the story is that his turn of heart begins to occur not as the result of an intervention by some saintlyChristian character who shows him the "real meaning of faith."Small, chance discoveries occur that allow the protagonist to see his wife in a new light and allow him to realize that though she and her faith were indeed imperfect, like himself, she too hid complexities and anxieties within her.The religion that he held in contempt because it seemed so false and shallow begins to seem genuine as he gains a better picture of the role it played in her inner life, that he was too self-absorbed to see in the years she was alive.

I appreciate this book for its honest portrayal of imperfectly led Christian lives, and the (not-sermonizing) message that the individual members of the church can be both saint and sinner.To acknowledge this, even to be laid psychologically bare, with all one's faults, before a non-believer, does not discredit Christ but is evidence of his mercy.

My review may make this book sound explicitly theological, but Mauriac does not beat the reader over the head with theology.The real strength of this book is its exquisite prose and psychological realism.So many modern novels have unabashedly delved into the rottenness of the human soul, but this book gives voice to the great Hope that is Christianity, that rottenness, in all its forms and stages, does not preclude redeemability. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Behind Our Masks Lie....
Francois Mauriac, winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize for Literature, turns here to an unusual plot device for him: murder. The fifty-something protagonist of 'The Mask of Innocence' is, on one level, akin to Wilde's fantasy character, Dorian Gray. Unlike Gray, however, Mauriac's suffering murderer is all too believable. She to be murdered is a wife who complicates his plans; the description of the murder itself is almost worthy of Dostoevski's in 'Crime and Punishment.' Yet the murderer alone takes pity on a country priest who is roundly ridiculed and hounded by 'christians' of the area. For Mauriac's best, try 'Viper's Tangle' or 'Woman of the Pharisees.' But if you love those, come back to this one. I've never read a Mauriac I didn't like and ponder for weeks afterward. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very confusing translation
I've heard that this is an excellent novel, one of Mauriac's best. Unfortunately, Mr. Hopkins' translation does not do it justice. Jumbled sentences and awkward constructions detract from the story to the point where I was literally unable to finish the book. Perhaps I'll have better luck with it in the original French... but I seriously wouldn't recommend spending money on this translation. ... Read more

Product Description
Les Mains jointes was the volume with which the future Nobel Prize winner, Francois Mauriac, first made an impact on the literary scene. This edition will make available a significant text that has been out of print for several decades. The book, edited by an acknowledged Mauriac specialist, will include an Introduction covering the composition and critical reception of the poems; an assessment of Mauriac's later dismissal of his early verse; Mauriac's evolution as a poet; and an overview of Mauriac's approach to versification. This will be followed by the text of the poems, and critical notes. Paul Cooke makes use for the first time of Mauriac's cahiers de jeunesse. Paul Cooke is Lecturer in French at Exeter University, where he teaches and researches mainly in the area of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature. Francois Mauriac (1885-1970) is best known for his novels, many of which have been translated into English: Therese Desqueyroux, Le Noeud de viperes, Le Mystere Frontenac among them. ... Read more

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This is an edition of the Mauriac novel, presented in the original French. The text is accompanied by comprehensive notes and an informative introduction, and is designed to facilitate a greater understanding of this great work of French literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

ambivalance unveiled
firm founded catholic that he was, mauriac was horrified that many readers find therese a sympathetic character; mauriac insisted he intended her to be "a monster," the embodiment of evil. this is one of those books (it has an odd affinity w/madame bovary, another heroine of confused intentions and behaviors)that readers will turn to again and again out of a difficult-to-satisfy desire to decode therese and/or themselves.therese's crimes are arguably commited by the third hand, the one we all generally keep behind our backs. this is a book that opens ones eyes to oneself: assuming one has periods of dispising ones spouse and/or child and/or friends and relatives; assuming that the people we are when things are going well and happily are frequently not the people we become when we are thwarted, disappointed, seemingly incapable of flight OR fight.

I DON'T READ FRENCH! THE BOOK IS WRITTEN IN FRENCH!
THERE WAS NOT ONE WORD ABOUT THE BOOK BEING IN FRENCH! I FEEL LIKE I'VE BEEN RIPPED OFF!

wonderful
This is the best French literary work ever! You must read it!

Psychological portrait of a wife, friend, and criminal.
Mauriac's psychological portrait of Therese Desqueyroux beautifully illustrates the infinite complexity of the human character.Therese goes through so many phases in this book, so many explanations of possiblemotivation for her strange crime, some of them deeply touching andinnocent, some abhorable.It is impossible to choose one opinion ofTherese and stick to it throughout the novel.At times she deserves onlyhatred, at times pity and love.Her ever-changing state of mind makes thereader question whether or not it is ever possible for a person toobjectively look back on their lives.Depending on her state of mind,Therese creates very different interpretations of her past. Mauriacengages the reader in trying to figure out what has brough Therese to thelevel of a criminal.Is it the fact that she grea up without a mother? That her husband does not love her?That she was born into the wrongatmosphere?That some people are simply born evil?And what makes thisbook so fascinating is that no single answer can satisfy Therese.Mauriactakes the reader through Therese's unhappy life, as well as her ownanalysis of why she has become a woman who loves to suffer and to watchothers suffer, as she tries to convince herself that happiness does notexist. ... Read more

Product Description
Fran_ois Mauriac's masterpiece and one of the greatest Catholic novels, ThZr_se Desqueyroux is the haunting story of an unhappily married young woman whose desperation drives her to thoughts of murder. Mauriac paints an unforgettable portrait of spiritual isolation and despair, but he also dramatizes the complex realities of forgiveness, grace, and redemption. Set in the countryside outside Bordeaux, in a region of overwhelming heat and sudden storms, the novel's landscape reflects the inner world of ThZr_se, a figure who has captured the imaginations of readers for generations.Raymond N. MacKenzie's new translation of ThZr_se Desqueyroux, the first since 1947, captures the poetic lyricism of Mauriac's prose as well as the intensity of his stream-of-consciousness narrative. MacKenzie also provides notes and a biographical and interpretive introduction to help readers better appreciate the mastery of Fran_ois Mauriac, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1952. This volume also includes a translation of _Conscience, The Divine Instinct,_ Mauriac's first draft of the story, never before available in English. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Feminist Psychological Novel
This 1992 novel by Nobel Laureate Francois Mauriac seemed to me to be one of the earliest feminist novels not written by a woman. Mauriac's protagonist, Therese, is a very intelligent, reasonably well-educated, independent woman who marries on a whim and suffers for it, making everyone around her suffer as well. Her simpleton husband tries nearly everything to make her be an obedient wife, but nothing works. Although Mauriac is often regarded as a Catholic novelist, this protagonist is in no way a conservative model for early twentieth century wives. Therese is the anti-hero who never yields. ... Read more

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Hardcover Publisher: The Heritage Press, New York (1950) ... Read more