A Woman Run Mad [Hardcover]

John L'Heureux (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 1988

John L'Heureux is a consummate stylist and entertainer, and in A Woman Run Mad he delivers a novel that is part comedy of manners and part psychosexual thriller. Blocked writer, accidental scholar, inattentive husband, all J. J. Quinn wants is peace, and he has gone to buy his wife an expensive handbag to accomplish it. As the bag in question walks out the door under the arm of a beautiful, aristocratic shoplifter, though, Quinn's curiosity leads him deep into mystery and danger. The shoplifter is Sarah Slade, a Boston Brahmin attempting to ditch a past as bloody as Medea's. Compared to Quinn's hypercompetent, Euripides-scholar wife, Claire, the unhinged Sarah is an alluring breath of fresh air -- but, of course, Quinn has no idea of the Pandora's box he's opened. Acclaimed by Newsweek as "witty and literate . . . Grand Guignol for grown-ups," A Woman Run Mad is an unsettling, deeply satisfying novel. "Remind[s] one of Iris Murdoch, or Muriel Spark, or E. M. Forster. Yet A Woman Run Mad is unlike any novel I know . . . unusual intelligence and personality are alive throughout the book." -- Richard P. Brickner, The New York Times Book Review; "Unless you have no interest in passions, the edge of madness, forbidden obsessions, runaway libidos and dangerous desires, A Woman Run Mad will fascinate you, from its title to its perfect final sentence. . . . A thinking man's Fatal Attraction." -- Chicago Sun-Times; "Normality -- as our time understands the word -- and monstrosity are L'Heureux's poles, and he joins them with extraordinary dexterity. . . . The ending is not to be revealed." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review; "A superior suspense story . . . It is the kind of story that might well have appealed to a writer like Patricia Highsmith, a drama of interlocking obsessions." -- The New York Times.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Less accomplished than one would expect from the publisher's advance ballyhoo, but leading up to a boffo ending, L'Heureux's (Desires) new novel titillates and titillatesand finally delivers. The major flaw is a cast of superficial, unappealing characters, each eccentric and self-involved, but bound together in a weave of coincidental meetings and relationships and further linked by an omnipresent, ugly, little boy. Feckless, self-exculpating J. J. Quinn is a bitter man: a failed novelist, he has just been denied tenure at Williams. Even more galling, his supportive, super efficient, tenured wife Claire is teaching a summer term at Dartmouth while Quinn is supposedly working on his novel in Boston. But Quinn is obsessed with Brahmin Sarah Slade, whom he spots shoplifting in Bonwit's and follows home to Louisburg Square. There he encounters her bodyguard, Angelo Tallino, a flagrant homosexual who reads existentialist authors and sleeps with Sarah's brother, president of the family firm. A decade earlier, Sarah had murdered and castrated her lover, had been found mad, and now is functionally dependent on her psychiatrist. When Claire discovers Quinn and Sarah's affair, she begins a campaign to win Quinn backand from this point the novel escalates in irony and tension. Often pretentious (quotes from Kierkegaard, snippets of Latin) the book is part thriller, part social comedy, part psychological suspense novel; and if L'Heureux has sacrificed credibility, he has come up with a surefire movie scenario. 35,000 first printing; major ad/promo; Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This tight psychosexual thriller revolves around two women "run mad": controlled, precise Classics professor Claire and her husband's new object of passion, Sarah, former Boston debutante with a violent secret in her past and precarious mental health. Husband Quinn is a struggling writer, now fired from his college teaching post, and he is surprised by his obsession with Sarah, although he feels liberated by their somewhat kinky affair. The build-up of tension is steadily paced and psychologically convincing; the characters, including some memorable minor players, are well defined and sympathetic. This should do very well in contemporary fiction collections. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Radford, Va.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 258 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (January 25, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067081752X
• ISBN-13: 978-0670817528
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,867,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A compelling read, November 10, 2001

By 

Busy Mom (Ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Woman Run Mad (Paperback)

This is not a book I would normally pick to read ~~ till a friend recommended this book to me. I have never heard of John L'Heureux before, so this is a new venture for me to read. After I turned the last page, the conclusion I reached may not be exactly what the author intended, but it did provoke a reaction from me.

I would have rated this book 5 based on its superb writing prose and how he snares your attention while reading this book ... but the use of graphic details of the murder and sex scenes are just a little too much for me to take. I don't see how it adds to this book at all ~~ it only takes away the enjoyment I had while reading the suspense he was building up ... and it is a let down. It's as if he decided that his story wasn't enough to keep my interest, so he tries to "jazz" it up to keep my attention. It didn't work.

Otherwise, the story within a story did keep my attention and made me think ~~ which I love it when an author grabs me by my eyes and keep me ensnared in seeing their point of views.

Quinn, an inattentive husband to Claire, sets off a chain of events when he followed Sarah home from the store after she steals a handbag that he was thinking of buying for Claire. In turn, Quinn gets propositioned by Angelo, who is Sarah's bodyguard and her brother's lover. It is a soap opera of a sort ~~ ones that the gods of old surely love to tell. Based on Claire's, a professor of Euripides-studies, conversations with Angelo, you can tell that L'Heureux is attempting to tell the bloody story of Medea through Sarah and Claire. Quinn's decisions lead to the chaos that erupted violently on everyone's part.

This book is great for discussions. It is a book I would recommend a book group to read together because there are so many interpretations of this book and its ending. This is also a book that makes you want to brush up on your Greek tragedies and see what the gods had to say. It is a good read ~~ in spite of the gory details that I wish had been downplayed ~~ and something I wouldn't mind discussing with someone about.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Reading, March 16, 2001

By 

"esquirrel" (Havertown, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Woman Run Mad (Paperback)

In all, this is a compelling read. The plot is tight, the characters are interesting, and the prose sizzles. There are some interesting metafictional aspects to the story as well. Two of the principal characters are writers, one of novels and one of academic studies of women in Euripides' plays; L'Heureux exploits this cleverly but not too overtly.

True there is gore. True one of the characters has had some nasty sexual experiences at the hands of a former lover. These are not gratuitously included for shock value, however. They enhance the story. It is good that L'Heureux did not shy away from describing these things; they amplify the psychological dimesions of the story, adding depth to the characters. That said, I'm sure many readers will find certain passages revolting. But, then, good fiction isn't only about puppy dogs and fields full of wildflowers.

On the whole this is one of the better contemporary novels I've read recently.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars As close to classical tragedy as American fiction comes., April 21, 2000

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Woman Run Mad (Mass Market Paperback)

This was L'Heureux's debut novel, but don't let that put you off; he was already an accomplished short story writer and poet. Oftentimes, short story writers and poets can't make the transition to the novel form, but that's not the case here. L'Heureux gives us the story of a husband, a wife, an insane murderess, and her homosexual bodyguard, and more than anything, underneath the gore and glitz, L'Heureux's real intention is to examine the relationships between these people.

There are few authors, in these days when the gods no longer have truck with humanity, that attempt to write tragedy in the classical Greek fashion. L'Heureux takes an inventive out by using insanity as the "god" whose mechanizations drive the narrative, and in doing so bring it closer to classical tragedy than to its modern cousin, metatheatre. It's a risky move, but one carried off extremely well by one of the American masters of letters.