innocence twentieth remembrance desqueyroux

books:

Holy Thursday: An Intimate Remembrance

1 review
Francois Mauriac

Sophia Institute Press, 1991

Mauriac: on Holy Thursday
In this profound and unique book Mauriac is able to touch his readers in a completely unexpected manner. It is a short and simple work yet deeply rich. The reader is given a chance to see the personal spirituality of Mauriac, which is normally more inaccessible in the fiction he is famous for. In this devotional work, Mauriac is able to avoid the pitfalls of using transparent sanctimonious ...

Life of Jesus

2 reviews
Francois Mauriac

Thomas More Publishing, 1978

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 ...

Le Sagouin

1 review
Francois Mauriac

French & European Pubns, 1973

Considering French Catholicism
Mauriac speaks of the catholic church, strange characters, a slightly mad mother, and a boy thusly left fairly un filled in his life amongst a noble family.

Viper's Tangle

7 reviews
Francois Mauriac

Sheed and Ward, 1947

A Lost Masterpiece
Few Americans realize that Mauriac was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, or that in his time he was considered to be one of France's greatest men of letters. "Catholic" writers have not been in vogue for some time, and in many of Mauriac's other works, the characters struggle with moral dilemmas that would be considered quaint and old-fashioned by many modern readers. The Viper's ...

Woman of the Pharisees

2 reviews
Francois Mauriac

Resources for Christian Living, 1986

Who is the Pharisee?
Mauriac, winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize for Literature, is one of the great underrated writers of the 20th century. His highly emotional approach to writing has been criticized (unjustly, I beleive) as sentimentalist. But the suffering of his characters, their humanity and loveability even in the midst of their personal failings and darknesses, make Mauriac's world incredibly compelling. ...

Le Noeud de Viperes

2 reviews
Francois Mauriac

Bernard Grasset, 1988

Le Noeud de Viperes is a masterpiece
Le Noeud de Viperes is probably my favorite novel, in any language. Mauriac is a craftsman and has a firm structure and progression in this book which will most likely go unnoticed because of his artistry. Mauriac, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, has given us here a universal, timeless tale of an old, dying man who wants to leave his inheritance to someone worthy. In the process of the ...

The Weakling and the Enemy

1 review
Francois Mauriac

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951

Love Suffers
In these two short novels, Francois Mauriac further explores the central theme of his life work: the mystery of love revealed through suffering. Mauriac, who won the 1952 Nobel Prize for literature, was a comitted Catholic whose faith nonetheless refused sentimentalism or happy endings. In "The Enemy," we meet an ugly man who through his family's wealth (and his own ill-advised reading of a ...

The Desert of Love

1 review
Francois Mauriac

Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1989

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 of the psyche of Raymond, Paul, and Maria Cross, the three main characters, that is fabulous and frightfully revealing. This novel is generally regarded as the best book of ...

DESQUEYROUX THÉRÈSE (French Language)

4 reviews
Francois Mauriac

Librairie Generale Francaise, 1981

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 ...

A Mauriac reader

2 reviews
Francois Mauriac

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968

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 of piercing love. This work contains four of his best novels, including the absolutely brilliant "Woman of the Pharisees" and tragically dark "Genetrix." Francois Mauriac is one of the ...

Therese Desqueyroux (Sheed & Ward Book)

1 review
François Mauriac

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005

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 ...

Flesh and Blood

1 review
Francois Mauriac

Dell, 1961

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.

Young Man in Chains

1 review
Francois Mauriac

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1961

Spiritual and Carnal Love
This early work by Francois Mauriac, the noted 20th-century French Catholic writer, foreshadows his later writings that deal with the conflict of spirit and flesh. The novel's "young man in chains" is a French student caught in a dilemma between his idealism, his longing for love, and his inability to break out of his self-imposed isolation and risk real involvement with other people. Written in ...

The Mask of Innocence

1 review
Francois Mauriac

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1953

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 ...

ANGELS AND BEASTS: NEW SHORT STORIES FROM FRANCE
Denis (selected and introduced with a preface by) [Francois Mauriac, Jean Prévost, Jules Supervielle, Georges Duhamel, Joseph d'Arbaud, Andre Chamson, Sully-Andre Peyre] Saurat

Westhouse, 1947

Therese (Twentieth-Century Classics)

3 reviews
Francois Mauriac

Penguin Classics, 1995

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 represented Christ. 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 for fulfillment. The novel takes place in three (maybe four?) vignettes, with Therese first being accused of ...

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