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juushikaTitle: The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles)
Author: Jean Cocteau
Translator: Rosamond Lehmann
Published: New York: New Directions, 1966 (1929)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 183
Total Page Count: 117,674
Text Number: 342
Read Because: fan of Gilbert Adair's The Holy Innocents/The Dreamers; borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The unusual, violent intimacy of adolescent siblings Paul and Elizabeth only grows when they're orphaned; between them they build a strange and private Room—but it is too fragile to be maintained forever. The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles) is a book equally strange and fragile, holding its subject in a dreamlike haze: time skips forward and then lingers; the voice (distinctly in translation, but strong) embraces nuance, finding it even when the siblings are at their most absurd, but maintains awareness of its audience and affects an almost mythical tone; nonetheless the story itself is keenly personal—as cascade of events driven forward by the siblings, coming to an unavoidable end. The New Directions publication is accompanied by illustrations by the author, and text and art resemble one another: equally stylized, deceptively bare, littered by specific and iconic detail, deeply surreal.
The Holy Terrors is a direct inspiration to Gilbert Adair's The Holy Innocents (republished as The Dreamers), and the parallels are strong; fans of Adair's book (or the derivative film) will do well to encounter this one. And it stands alone. I hesitate to recommend it widely, as it is a strange book both in style and in content: a stone skipping across a lake of taboo. Personally I adored it, although its sparse and dreamlike style imposes necessary limitations; like a dream, it threatens to be fleeting yet lingers.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Jean Cocteau
Translator: Rosamond Lehmann
Published: New York: New Directions, 1966 (1929)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 183
Total Page Count: 117,674
Text Number: 342
Read Because: fan of Gilbert Adair's The Holy Innocents/The Dreamers; borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The unusual, violent intimacy of adolescent siblings Paul and Elizabeth only grows when they're orphaned; between them they build a strange and private Room—but it is too fragile to be maintained forever. The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles) is a book equally strange and fragile, holding its subject in a dreamlike haze: time skips forward and then lingers; the voice (distinctly in translation, but strong) embraces nuance, finding it even when the siblings are at their most absurd, but maintains awareness of its audience and affects an almost mythical tone; nonetheless the story itself is keenly personal—as cascade of events driven forward by the siblings, coming to an unavoidable end. The New Directions publication is accompanied by illustrations by the author, and text and art resemble one another: equally stylized, deceptively bare, littered by specific and iconic detail, deeply surreal.
The Holy Terrors is a direct inspiration to Gilbert Adair's The Holy Innocents (republished as The Dreamers), and the parallels are strong; fans of Adair's book (or the derivative film) will do well to encounter this one. And it stands alone. I hesitate to recommend it widely, as it is a strange book both in style and in content: a stone skipping across a lake of taboo. Personally I adored it, although its sparse and dreamlike style imposes necessary limitations; like a dream, it threatens to be fleeting yet lingers.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
