A review by notaturnip
Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau

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.