Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Happiness has no story." - Jules Barbey., September 8, 2000
Any fan of Baudelaire, Huysmans, or decadent fiction in general needs to read this book. When published, 'Les Diaboliques' was considered so vile and disturbing that police actually seized it for offense to public morality. Even today, with it's obsessive excursions into crime, sexual devience, and it's dark, satanic undertones (Barbey was an eccentric catholic), it still retains a shocking, raw depravity. The 'devils' in the novel are all female ; useing their dominating, almost ravenous sexuality they manipulate and overpower men, even abuse them. They take life and love on their own terms, sometimes with savage, brutal violence. The dark under-world of eroticism and sex are explored and revealed in a slightly deranged light. Often times the stories seem to have some kind of mysterious, perverse moral, but it is so twisted the reader is never sure. In fact, even the character's motivations are never fully revealed ; their is horror, but not always directly, it pervades all around like some putrid, foul-smelling perfume. Terror is everywhere, hidden in the shadows of life. The narative itself adds to the overall creepy atmosphere, full of twists, detours, digressions. A classic of evil literature, this book demands to be ghoulishly savoured.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beware of sensual women, February 8, 2001
Six masterpieces of storytelling. The stories are narrated by their own male protagonists, destroyed by six devilish women. These are stories about infamous sex and crime, charged with eroticism. They are also a portrait of Paris and Normandy societies during the years of the Restoration and the kingship of Louis Philippe. Barbey was an extravagant Catholic and a monarchist. Two other good novels by him, "L'Ensorcelée" and "Le Chevalier Des Touches", deal with the reactionary fight of the "chouanes" to depose the Revolutionary regime and bring back Monarchy. In "The She-Devils", Barbey shows the dark side of female sexuality, depicting women as dangerous sensual animals who don't stop at anything in their search for satisfaction and egocentric fulfillment. The prose is raw and refined at the same time, and you feel you would have liked to meet these sensual women -from a distance.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mænads of decadence, December 24, 2000
The most obvious feature of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's collection of novellas is his peculiar horror of female sexuality. In each of these tales, women, by their erotic wiles and passionate natures, rule and brand the male narrators of the stories. These women's sexual needs are in each case the mainspring that drives tales of death, murder, or violence.
Another intriguing thing about these stories is their Russian-doll structure. Each of these stories begins in a setting removed from its chief events, and introduces the male narrator as a character in his own right, as he narrates the tale of his harrowing encounter with the she-devils who give the book its title. Even as these stories are stories of crime or horror, they are also stories about story-telling.
The author's curious prejudices also are manifest through the tales: Barbey d'Aurevilly was a bigoted partisan of the Roman church, authoritarian and monarchist in politics, and filled with apparent nostalgia for the military life. These opinions are constantly touched on by the stories. While they may make his view that female sexuality is a ravenous force somewhat more comprehensible, they make his writing such a disturbingly sensual book somewhat ironic. In fact, the French authorities sought to suppress -Les Diaboliques-, even as they did with -Madame Bovary- and -Les Fleurs de Mal-.
The bottom line is that each of these tales is a good read. D'Aurevilly shows himself to be a master of narrative technique, in that the horrors he -suggests- are far more vivid than the horrors he -discloses-. The stories, then, will make the reader his -accomplice- in visioning a world of sexual violence. This is the most diabolical stroke of all.
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