Viper's Tangle (Loyola Classics)
by Francois Mauriac
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Book Summary Information
Author: Francois MauriacBrand: Spring Arbor/Ingram
Introduction: Robert Coles
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-09-01
ISBN: 0829422110
Number of pages: 312
Publisher: Loyola Classics
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780829422115
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Viper's Tangle (Loyola Classics)
Book Review: Eschatological Meditation
Summary: 5 Stars
I was very grateful when Ignatius Press sent a copy of this book to me to review for Catholicfiction.net. It's truly a "lost masterpiece," as other reviewers have noted. I thought I'd share a truncated version of my original review, as I feel this book deserves to be read by anyone who appreciates deep, if dark, stories with a profound spiritual element. Indeed, "Vipers' Tangle" is structured as a lengthy confession--sometimes a confession, sometimes a polemic, sometimes an invective--from Monsieur Louis, a wealthy retired lawyer of declining health who feels surrounded by a nest of vipers, his family. Yet the vipers' tangle is within as well as without.
The story bears a passing resemblance to Dickens' classic, "A Christmas Carol": a rich, "covetous old sinner" struggles against God's grace to find redemption. But where Dickens' tale had its author's infectious good-humor and largeness of spirit, Vipers' Tangle is an often disturbing journey to the heart of an odious man's mystery. In both stories, however, the ultimate point is that God's grace is accessible to anyone, even the most miserly old sinner.
Through his barrister narrator, a man very difficult character to stomach much less love, Mauriac is making a case of his own. By presenting the reader with a malevolent old man on his deathbed, the author's case is simply this: no one is beyond the reach of God's grace. Without romanticizing Louis, Mauriac expresses the tragedy of a wasted life, the tragedy of a man who has closed himself off from a community of love to wallow in his own despair. Louis is sinned against as well as sinning, but he reserves many of his harshest judgments for himself. He is honest, not hypocritical, and he often turns his cruelty inwards. There is a telling moment when someone asks the local priest if it is permissible to hate the Jews. He replies that "each of us has the right to hate one of Christ's butchers, and one only--himself, but no one else."
"Vipers' Tangle" is an eschatological meditation on the final things, the moment of death. "Apocalypse" is a popular subject for many sensationalistic religious thrillers, but the fact remains that every person's death is his or her own apocalypse--the end of the world. Though unsentimental, Mauriac's vision of one lonely man's last days is hopeful. As Death approaches Louis, the material universe begins to slough away, to diminish in importance as it recedes behind him. The essential drama of Catholic fiction (and why so many great writers are Catholic or have catholic sensibilities) is not whether a character dies--we all die--but whether a character dies in a state of grace. High stakes make for compelling stories, and no stake is higher than the condition of one's eternal soul. Choices in this life have repercussions in the next.
Mauriac asks the reader to bear with his bitter, cruel narrator. He even implicates the reader in Louis' sin-ridden life by suggesting that love requires patience and understanding--a willingness to reach out to souls in torment. "Even the genuinely good cannot, unaided, learn to love. To penetrate beyond the absurdities, the vices, and above, the stupidities of human creatures, one must possess the secret of a love that the world has now forgotten."
Summary of Viper's Tangle (Loyola Classics)
?Mauriac?s best novel.??Catholic World
?A lucid and penetrating study . . . Mauriac proves himself as good a storyteller as he is a psychologist.??The New York Times
?A most admirable and exciting novel.??New Statesman
The masterpiece of one of the twentieth century?s greatest Catholic writers, Vipers? Tangle tells the story of Monsieur Louis, an embittered aging lawyer who has spread his misery to his entire estranged family. Louis writes a journal to explain to them?and to himself?why his soul has been deformed, why his heart seems like a foul nest of twisted serpents. Mauriac?s novel masterfully explores the corruption caused by pride, avarice, and hatred, and its opposite?the divine grace that remains available to each of us until the very moment of our deaths. It is the unforgettable tale of the battle for one man?s soul.
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