Les Enfants Terribles (Vintage Crucial Classics) [Import] [Paperback]

Jean Cocteau (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; New Ed edition (August 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099455692
• ISBN-13: 978-0099455691
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cocteau's Masterpiece of Imagination and Longing, April 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Les Enfants Terribles (Paperback)

Cocteau's novel is gem of a book which deals with the power of make-believe to transport the characters into worlds of their own making. Specifically, Les Enfants Terribles tells the story of a brother and sister who, after the death of their mother, create a sanctuary in one enchanted room and via their active imaginations. These fantasies become the axis on which their lives revolve until it spirals out of control and ends in a climax befitting a Greek tragedy. Reading this book is like reliving a fever dream in which the reality and fantasy blur.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Almost as magical as the film., March 21, 2001

By 

darragh o'donoghue - See all my reviews

This review is from: Les Enfants Terribles (Hardcover)

'Les Enfants Terribles' is one of those great novels of childhood at which the French excel, full of vibrancy, caprice, terror, passion, danger, wonder, fun: its narrative is an allegory of that life-, body-, soul-changing move from childhood to adulthood.

But it is so much more. It is the great Surrealist novel, about the child-like way of looking at the dim, everyday world as marvellous, as new: a snow-blanketed street, a messy room, a trip to the seaside. It is a novel of rite, of theatre, of play; of the classical and the modern; a living Surrealist manifesto, where reality, dream and imagination conflate in a supreme act of transformation, as dependent on, yet transcending, the real world as the novel's heroes. It is poetry and imagination as King Midas; a moustache on a marble bust; the lightest and most profound book ever written.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars NEVER RECEIVED ITEM, August 13, 2009

By 

Marilyn S. Schmett (INDIANA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Les Enfants Terribles (Ldp Litterature) (French Edition) (Mass Market Paperback)

I NEVER receivd this item from the 3rd party seller. I WILL NEVER use this service again. I will go to my local Barnes/Nobles. I waited THREE weeks after the agreed upon date and have yet to see the product. BAD SERVICE!!!!!