Thérèse Desqueyroux (Penguin Modern Classics) [ Language:English ]

A brilliant novella by an author who is too much neglected in Britain. A good way to get to know Mauriac.

I enjoyed the book and am interested to read the follow on book to know what happened to Therese. I am not sure about the translation - not quite naturally accurate. I put this in my book club but have not yet had a feedback.

A wonderfully sympathetic character study

Fantastic writing, and the story was well prosed.

At only 115 pages long this is relatively short, and doesn't take that long to read. But don't let the size of this mislead you into thinking that this is a short book with little or no substance. The most popular of Francois Mauriac's books this is a real gem.We start the book with Therese Desqueyroux coming out of court after the case against her poisoning her husband collapses. Now she is making her way home, contemplating what to say to her husband. For her father, and for her husband's family it is a relief that the case has collapsed, after all the important thing to them is the family names, and the dishonour that could have been brought upon them.In some ways this is slightly strange, you do have quite a long piece of internal monologue here from Therese as she travels back to her home. As we read about her past, and then what happens when she arrives back to her husband we learn quite a bit more about Therese. Like Emma Bovary, Therese wants to escape the life she has, although she has a child she is no mother, and her life is full of ineffable boredom. What Therese wants is company, intellectual chat and stimulation, not to be stuck in the isolated boredom that she can see around her.This is quite complex despite its short length, and there is more than enough to get your teeth into. Whether you can or will feel sympathy for Therese will I think vary differently from reader to reader, depending on your own experiences. Overall you get a feeling of claustrophobic despair reading this, and it would make a great choice for book groups. Also, this book makes a good accompaniment for  Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics)  as both the lead female characters want something more from their lives, coming from the same type of provincial background.

Got this for a friend who really enjoyed watching the film. Gripping. One can understand both from the husband's point of view and the wife's. A sad tale.

Don't just read this single novel but find the Penguin compilation of the four stories with Therese. The first novel (Therese Dequeyroux) written in 1927, details the ramifications of her failed attempted poisoning (overdosing) of her husband Bernard a few years, and one daughter, into their marriage. The second and third are shorter stories of her meeting a Freudian doctor and the third her romantic meeting of a young man in a hotel. The final novel (The end of the Night) written 1935, is set 15 years later as Therese deals with her reconciliation with daughter Marie, and Marie’s engagement to Georges.Therese is an intriguing character and following her life in this mixed perspective narrative is a worthy read. The style has a clever sense of seediness, classic literary prose and psychology. One doesn’t know if it’s a loveless marriage or a loveless wife; whether to feel sorry or despise Therese; is she too weak or too strong willed? She is self-absorbed but at who’s fault?I would strongly recommend committing to reading all the novels and not just the more renown first – it is the conclusive final novel that draws everything together.“How distorted in our minds the people we know best become when we are not actually with them”.A great book – 5 stars.

I brought this book on the strength of the description on the back cover. I was intrigued about the idea of someone who evades punishment imposed by the state only to have to confront a different form of punishment. The majority of the book leads up Therese’s arrival at her home after acquittal in court focusing on the lack joy after acquittal and trepidation over returning home. The prose is purposeful and delicate, I would suddenly notice that events were disjointed and realise that Therese has slipped into a dream or reverie I very much admire that sort of light touch, mirroring what its like to be thinking about something and then letting your mind wander into something that is more whimsical or dream like. Once Therese gets home the book changes somewhat and the thoughts and view points of others becomes more prevalent making it harder to identify with anyone’s position.The result of this is a genuinely complex and believable story. At first glace, in the earlier chapters, it seems quite clear cut that Therese’s father and husband are vain asses more concerned with what they call family honour than anything else, and of course this amounts to nothing else than their own embarrassment and/or fear that Therese’s shameful action will thwart their own ambitions. However the later chapters make such easy identification with Therese much harder, not because she is in anyway less likable/justified, but because the family members are engaged in their provincial life and the roles and responsibilities that come with it, i.e. the family members are acting in very normal way and have understandable concerns/frustrations about how Therese is perceived will affect all their lives; whereas Therese could just be seen as someone who is unable to engage with the world she inhabits and her attempt to poison her husband the culmination of her repulsion to the life she is leading.This left me with a feeling of what was the point of this story. It merely seems to be a melodrama of relationship breakdown between two people, who were unsuited to each other in the first place; but it is this very mundanity that makes for such believable story telling, and perhaps here the skilfulness of Mauriac’s writing is apparent. I did wonder if I could interpret the story as a mediation on existential ideas of authenticity, i.e. that the family members with their concerns over how others will seem them are living inauthentic lives, whereas Therese, repulsed by the hypocrisy such concerns produce is striving to escape the provincial life in favour of living a more authentic life free of such concerns. However I would recommend the interested reader to engage with this book and see what meaning they can find in it. It certainly is not a simple novel despite it short length.