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From Amazon
Mad Shadows, Marie-Claire Blais's astonishing first novel, caused an immediate sensation when it was first published in French in 1959. Blais was only 20 years old at the time, and many critics were simply too surprised to respond articulately to her work. Looking back now, decades later, it is clear that Mad Shadows (published in French as La Belle Bête), while not a perfect novel, can justifiably be compared to Beckett, Strindberg, or the early psychological novels of Knut Hamsun. It is a short, spare novel, without an identifiable setting or nationality. Its characters are few, and most are driven by pure carnivorous vanity. The beautiful beast of the original title is Patrice, a mindless Adonis worshipped by his widowed mother, Louise, and loathed by his ugly but intelligent sister, Isabelle-Marie. Louise's devotion to her son wanes when she takes a new husband, a dandy with a golden cane. The characters prey upon one another in a nightmarish cycle of physical and psychological violence, broken only by Isabelle-Marie's doomed marriage to a beautiful, blind--but recovering--young man. Blais's later works, like Dürer's Angel or These Festive Nights, are more sophisticated, but the lurid energy of Mad Shadows makes for an unforgettable morality tale. Despite the depravity of Blais's characters, their motives and worries are all too familiar. The most disturbing feature of Mad Shadows is its relevance. --Jack Illingworth
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