One of the great mavericks of French literature, Georges Bernanos combined raw realism with a spiritual focus of visionary intensity. Mouchette stands with his celebrated Diary of a Country Priest as the perfection of his singular art.
"Nothing but a little savage" is how the village school-teacher describes fourteen-year-old Mouchette, and that view is echoed by every right-thinking local citizen. Mouchette herself doesn't bother to contradict it; ragged, foulmouthed, dirt-poor, a born liar and loser, she knows herself to be, in the words of the story, "alone, completely alone, against everyone." Hers is a tale of "tragic solitude" in which despair and salvation appear to be inextricably intertwined.
Bernanos uncompromising genius was a powerful inspiration to Flannery O'Connor, and Mouchette was the source of a celebrated movie by Robert Bresson.
| ISBN: | 9781590171516 |
| Publication date: | 18th March 2012 |
| Author: | Georges Bernanos |
| Publisher: | New York Review Books |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 156 pages |
| Series: | New York Review Books Classics |
| Genres: |
General Fiction Narrative theme: Interior life Narrative theme: Sense of place |