Thérèse is a story nucleated around a singular, isolated event. A woman attempts to poison her husband, and fails. The rest of the book traces what led her to do such a thing, and what her life looks like in the aftermath. What made this story interesting to me, however, was not the fact that she tried, but rather the fact that she feels that it was the most natural thing to do, as natural as twisting a cigarette in order to put it out.

Mauriac paints us a portrait of a troubled woman excised from the world around her, as though cut from a photograph. Unable to form connections, we are presented with a woman who, page after page, regresses ever more into her mind until even her words become meaningless to those around her. We are presented with a woman made ill by the despair of being unable to form a human connection, and yet her biggest obstacles are her own actions. She sabotages herself time and time again, ad infinitum until her efforts are fully spent, feeling as though fully incapable of being loved, in spite of the love she has to give. She is condemned to loneliness, forever watching the world go by around her, but unable to participate therein. She sees herself as an old woman, fading in spirit, succumbing to the processes of putrefaction, who fleetingly attempts to escape her predicament, to connect with another soul, only to fall back once more into the pit she dug herself into.

What a ray of sunshine!

I found this book to be incredibly fascinating, and enriching. Although the situation of her life was laced with  the peculiarities of her geographical and temporal situation, I couldn't help but see myself in her at times, if only occasionally. Her long internal soliloquies, although carefully and finely woven into the particularities of her own life, there is occasionally a single thread that stands out, that the reader can trace with their eye until they find its end within the recess of their own mind. By no means would I say that Thérèse is an "everywoman," but I will say that, in demonstrating an extreme of human egotism, I was able to follow her psyche through to its undoing. Its hard not to see a little bit of her in yourself.

I deeply loved this book, if not for the character herself, then for the hidden truths, desires, and vices that she presents to us. Mauriac gives us a lot to chew on and a lot to digest. I definitely recommend this story to those who love the classic psychological novel, but who are searching for something slightly more real.