Reviews

Les enfants terribles by Jean Cocteau

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notaturnip's review against another edition

3.0

I wish I could give half-stars for reviews because this book left me with a lot of conflicted feelings. The prose is absolutely beautiful, and the overall imagery of opulent squalor really resonates. In way it almost reminded me of 'The Yellow Wallpaper', but as a novel(la?) rather than a short story. Honestly, a short story might have served the image a little better, because it's sometimes very difficult to work out exactly what's going on. While you can manage to keep going and piece together what's happened, it means you're reading through with a feeling of vagueness and, at the risk of sounding like a complete git, a sort of expansive alienness. Time skips around, the locations aren't always clear, relationships change and the balance of power shifts, and it's often just a matter of sticking with it for the next iteration. I suspect this one is going to be a slow burner for me — regardless of the word-by-word execution, it has definitely left an imprint on me.
I wanted to give this 3.5 stars but I can't, so I'm giving it 3 stars instead.

a_dominy's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

_enoughalready's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

cle_mrl's review against another edition

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j’ai adoré

saturnsmoons's review against another edition

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3.5

weird as hell. french as hell. beginning had much better content going on than the end, i was quite disappointed. but i don’t regret reading it either! what an odd trip of a book!

casparb's review against another edition

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4.0

Love Cocteau lots and the prose here absolutely slaps. The man cannot miss.

Something to do with the translation renders this, in Part One, into a fairly 50s-ish Englishness. The school of jolly-rather-wouldn't and so on. So the first section of the novel reads like if Nabokov wrote The Famous Five or something, which, having thought of, I want to read. In truth, there is an Ada ring to a lot of this.

My feeling is that JC's films are exquisite and catastrophic and probably perfect - or at least I find the Orpheus trilogy this way. This novel is brilliant and very interesting and worth reading but I wasn't ecstatic as I was for the films. love you jc