Thérèse: A Portrait in Four Parts
By François Mauriac Thérèse: A Portrait in Four Parts presents in full the tragedy of Thérèse Desqueyroux. Acquitted of the attempted murder of her husband, Thérèse escapes one prison only to find herself enclosed in another: a wretched life of envy and frustration. Beginning with the eponymous novel, and moving quickly through the novellas Thérèse and the Doctor and Thérèse at the Hotel to its harrowing terminus at The End of the Night, François Mauriac completes his emblem of “that power, granted to all human beings…of saying ‘No’ to the law which beats them down.” Technically outstanding, the Thérèse stories employ early cinematographic devices to create their alternatingly restive and stifling atmosphere, adeptly presented in English here by Gerard Hopkins’ translation. “Her charm—so the world had said once—was irresistible.” Perhaps more so than any of Mauriac’s other characters, Thérèse Desqueyroux embodies his artistic raisonnement: “My characters do not perhaps all believe