Mauriac, the winner of the Nobel prize for Literature in 1952, is perhaps best known for his novel
Vipers' Tangle (aka
Knot of Vipers).
This novel, like that one, is about an unhappy bourgeois French family
in the early twentieth century. Paul Courreges is a successful doctor
whose passion for one of his patients leads him to the brink of
abandoning his family and fortune. His son, Raymond, becomes deeply
infatuated with a woman he happens to meet on a train. The object of
their desires is, in fact, the same woman, Maria Cross, although the
versions of her they cherish in their respective imaginations are quite
different. Their relationships with Maria come to have a life-defining
impact on both of them.
There is very little action in this book. It is primarily a
psychological, moral, and therefore finally spiritual tale, much like
the work of Leon Bloy. Throughout, Mauriac shows himself a master at
depicting how seemingly inconsequential actions, once internalized, can
become distorted and magnified, growing in the heart like a snake
twisting inside an egg. He is not likely to please readers
uncomfortable with subtlety and ambiguity.
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