Viper's Tangle

by François Mauriac and Robert Silhol (Editors) François Mauriac (Author); John T. Stoker

Book Overview

While compiling a journal to be read by his wife and family after his death, Louis, a wealthy French lawyer, uncovers the psychological contradictions that lie at the heart of vice and virtue.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0881843059
• ISBN13: 9780881843057
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

One of the greatest pieces of Catholic literature

François Mauriac was a profoundly Catholic novelist. He didn't write pious stories of the Saints or of holy priests and nuns. He wrote stories about people who lived dark, dissolute lives; who hurt others and themselves; but who are offered redemption. He won the Nobel prize for literature, but in a modern, atheistic France is barely feted. Le noeud de vipères is, to my mind, his greatest novel. The story of a husband who treats his wife and family with utter disdain, verging on hatred; a man with a blackened heart, but for whom his impending death brings new insights and the possibility of redemption. It remains one of the greatest books I have ever read. If you prefer to read it in English, try: Vipers' Tangle (The Loyola Classics Series)

A Christian novel unafraid of psychological realism

I am surprised that one of the reviews (referring to the AudioBook version) calls this novel sermonizing. I have read many of the Loyola classics, and I appreciate most of them as pleasantly innocuous novels with Christian themes, but of all that I have read so far, I find Viper's Tangle the most literary and the least didactic. It is also one of the most uncontrived conversion stories that I have ever read. The protagonist of the story, a miserly old man close to death, tells of his bitterness towards his family and the world with great psychological acumen. He explains to the reader exactly how his hypocritical bourgeouis family has led him to go to great lengths in plotting to disinherit them. He despises his wife's Catholicism, and he offers an incredibly disturbing because realistic portrait of her narrow-mindedness, her failures of charity, even as he freely confesses his own wretched flaws. What is extraordinary about the story is that his turn of heart begins to occur not as the result of an intervention by some saintly Christian character who shows him the "real meaning of faith." Small, chance discoveries occur that allow the protagonist to see his wife in a new light and allow him to realize that though she and her faith were indeed imperfect, like himself, she too hid complexities and anxieties within her. The religion that he held in contempt because it seemed so false and shallow begins to seem genuine as he gains a better picture of the role it played in her inner life, that he was too self-absorbed to see in the years she was alive. I appreciate this book for its honest portrayal of imperfectly led Christian lives, and the (not-sermonizing) message that the individual members of the church can be both saint and sinner. To acknowledge this, even to be laid psychologically bare, with all one's faults, before a non-believer, does not discredit Christ but is evidence of his mercy. My review may make this book sound explicitly theological, but Mauriac does not beat the reader over the head with theology. The real strength of this book is its exquisite prose and psychological realism. So many modern novels have unabashedly delved into the rottenness of the human soul, but this book gives voice to the great Hope that is Christianity, that rottenness, in all its forms and stages, does not preclude redeemability.

Le Noeud de Viperes is a masterpiece

Le Noeud de Viperes is probably my favorite novel, in any language. Mauriac is a craftsman and has a firm structure and progression in this book which will most likely go unnoticed because of his artistry. Mauriac, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, has given us here a universal, timeless tale of an old, dying man who wants to leave his inheritance to someone worthy. In the process of the story, which is presented as the man's journal, the images of many memorable characters are left in our minds, as well as the awe of perhaps the most beautiful conversion in literature. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who can read French and who wants a lovely, profound read. This was the first literature I read in French, and it remains my favorite.

Incredible!

A brilliant and sucessful lawyer lays dying. He ruminates over his discovery twenty years earlier that his wife had been passionately in love with another man and had married him for more practical reasons. During these twenty years, he has become more and more detached from and bitter toward his family and he spends his convalescence listening intently to the whispers of his family reaching him from downstairs. They discuss his wealth and his difficult ways. His only consolation is the contemplation of his final triumph - when, after his death, his family rushes to the safe and instead of the stocks and bonds they are looking for, they find only a letter. The brilliant letter that makes up this incredible book.

An extremely sympathetic and sad tale of human relations.

A love story that is more poignant because of the lack of any real "romance" and a lesson to all that ones tendency for egocentric scenario-building can be most self-destructive. Not easy to find in english, but a true classic.