Customer Reviews

Therese (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

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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 poisoning her husband, then moving to Paris and becoming a lover of many men, and finally her one truest act of love toward a young man who is drawn to both her and to God. The novel may offend Christians (since there's no cute or easy ending), offend protestants (since Mauriac sees Christanity and Catholicism as synonyms), and offend non-believers (Mauriac, for all his literary brilliance, is a Jesus freak at heart). I recommend Therese (and Mauriac's other works, incl. the non-listed on Amazon "River of Fire,") most highly.

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!

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.

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 HUSBAND AND DAUGHTER AND HER SUFFERING THROUGHOUT THE REST OF HER LIFE AS SHE ATTEMPTS TO LIVE WITH THE VIVID MEMORY OF HER CRIME.