A Woman Run Mad

Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking psychological thriller!
Review: I am duly impressed with this novel. John L'Heureux has crafted a rather disturbing and compelling psychological thriller. In fact, it is one of the best thrillers I have read in quite a long time.

In an attempt to achieve peace in an otherwise turbulent marriage, J.J. Quinn sets out to find the perfect gift for his wife. However, in his quest to find said gift, he stumbles upon a beautiful and mysterious shoplifter. Intrigued, Quinn integrates himself into the shoplifter's life -- though he has no knowledge of the enigmatic woman's sinister past. A blocked novelist, Quinn believes he's finally found his inspiration through the ecstatic passion that Sarah Slade bestows upon him, but he gets more than he's bargained for...

The building of tension and suspense reaches a flooring climax.

The padding out of the story is intriguing and clever and the dialogue is sharp and full of wit. The characters are well developed, especially Angelo (Sarah's brother-in-law) and Claire (Quinn's wife). L'Heureux has written an intelligent and haunting tale of eroticism and obsession. A Woman Run Mad should be read from cover to read. Thus, I recommend it most highly.

Rating:
Summary: Good Reading
Review: In all, this is a compelling read. The plot is tight, the characters are interesting, and the prose sizzles. There are some interesting metafictional aspects to the story as well. Two of the principal characters are writers, one of novels and one of academic studies of women in Euripides' plays; L'Heureux exploits this cleverly but not too overtly.

True there is gore. True one of the characters has had some nasty sexual experiences at the hands of a former lover. These are not gratuitously included for shock value, however. They enhance the story. It is good that L'Heureux did not shy away from describing these things; they amplify the psychological dimesions of the story, adding depth to the characters. That said, I'm sure many readers will find certain passages revolting. But, then, good fiction isn't only about puppy dogs and fields full of wildflowers.

On the whole this is one of the better contemporary novels I've read recently.

Rating:
Summary: Good Reading
Review: In all, this is a compelling read. The plot is tight, the characters are interesting, and the prose sizzles. There are some interesting metafictional aspects to the story as well. Two of the principal characters are writers, one of novels and one of academic studies of women in Euripides' plays; L'Heureux exploits this cleverly but not too overtly.

True there is gore. True one of the characters has had some nasty sexual experiences at the hands of a former lover. These are not gratuitously included for shock value, however. They enhance the story. It is good that L'Heureux did not shy away from describing these things; they amplify the psychological dimesions of the story, adding depth to the characters. That said, I'm sure many readers will find certain passages revolting. But, then, good fiction isn't only about puppy dogs and fields full of wildflowers.

On the whole this is one of the better contemporary novels I've read recently.

Rating:
Summary: A compelling read
Review: This is not a book I would normally pick to read ~~ till a friend recommended this book to me. I have never heard of John L'Heureux before, so this is a new venture for me to read. After I turned the last page, the conclusion I reached may not be exactly what the author intended, but it did provoke a reaction from me.

I would have rated this book 5 based on its superb writing prose and how he snares your attention while reading this book ... but the use of graphic details of the murder and sex scenes are just a little too much for me to take. I don't see how it adds to this book at all ~~ it only takes away the enjoyment I had while reading the suspense he was building up ... and it is a let down. It's as if he decided that his story wasn't enough to keep my interest, so he tries to "jazz" it up to keep my attention. It didn't work.

Otherwise, the story within a story did keep my attention and made me think ~~ which I love it when an author grabs me by my eyes and keep me ensnared in seeing their point of views.

Quinn, an inattentive husband to Claire, sets off a chain of events when he followed Sarah home from the store after she steals a handbag that he was thinking of buying for Claire. In turn, Quinn gets propositioned by Angelo, who is Sarah's bodyguard and her brother's lover. It is a soap opera of a sort ~~ ones that the gods of old surely love to tell. Based on Claire's, a professor of Euripides-studies, conversations with Angelo, you can tell that L'Heureux is attempting to tell the bloody story of Medea through Sarah and Claire. Quinn's decisions lead to the chaos that erupted violently on everyone's part.

This book is great for discussions. It is a book I would recommend a book group to read together because there are so many interpretations of this book and its ending. This is also a book that makes you want to brush up on your Greek tragedies and see what the gods had to say. It is a good read ~~ in spite of the gory details that I wish had been downplayed ~~ and something I wouldn't mind discussing with someone about.

Rating:
Summary: A deep disappointment
Review: This is the first novel by L'Heureux that I've read and I must admit I was quite struck by his writing style. L'Heureux is utterly in control of his carefully crafted prose and can make his words work in ways few other writers can. At all times he knows what his writing is doing, and it's doing exactly what he wants. Perhaps the best parts of this novel are the moments when the plot becomes almost metafictional as L'Heureux breaks down the barriers between himself and his characters and his character's characters in new and interesting ways (one of his characters is a novelist).

That said, the novel as a whole is atrocious. For all the suspense that L'Heureux tries to build toward the end of the story the ending is ridiculously predictable. Maybe the title gives too much away, or maybe it's because the main characters, who start off rather complex, bend so far toward types as the story progresses that the ending could only come out the way it did. By the time the novel ends so little substance remains in the plot and the characters that the reader wonders why they bothered to read the book at all. Also, although I am almost never bothered by sex and violence, this novel suffers terribly from the most hideously disgusting sex and murder scenes I have read in a long time. The extreme degree of shock value L'Heureux reaches for seems entirely inorganic and unnecessary and only cheapens what he has tried to create with this majestic but abject failure of a novel.

Rating:
Summary: As close to classical tragedy as American fiction comes.
Review: This was L'Heureux's debut novel, but don't let that put you off; he was already an accomplished short story writer and poet. Oftentimes, short story writers and poets can't make the transition to the novel form, but that's not the case here. L'Heureux gives us the story of a husband, a wife, an insane murderess, and her homosexual bodyguard, and more than anything, underneath the gore and glitz, L'Heureux's real intention is to examine the relationships between these people.

There are few authors, in these days when the gods no longer have truck with humanity, that attempt to write tragedy in the classical Greek fashion. L'Heureux takes an inventive out by using insanity as the "god" whose mechanizations drive the narrative, and in doing so bring it closer to classical tragedy than to its modern cousin, metatheatre. It's a risky move, but one carried off extremely well by one of the American masters of letters.