Customer Reviews

Les Enfants Terribles (Vintage Crucial Classics)

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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.

'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.

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!!!!!