Genetrix (Novel)

With the publication of the novel Le baiser au lepreux (A Kiss for the Leper) in 1922, François Mauriac was hailed as a luminary in fiction. Genetrix, published the following year, demonstrated that this newly achieved stardom was more than deserved. The protagonist of Genetrix is Félicité Cazenave, the epitome of an overprotective, infantilizing mother, treating her fifty-year-old son Fernand as a weak and doltish child. When Fernand marries their young neighbor, Mathilde Coustous, Félicité is consumed with jealousy, swearing never to release her son.

Rendering beauty into bitterness, Mauriac shows the decay of love between mother and son as they madly, almost blindly, embrace the onrushing prospect of damnation.

Paperback, 150 pages.