A sequel to the celebrated French critic and semiotician's eerie
allegorical novel The Old Man and the Wolves (1994, not reviewed)
fuses a neatly constructed murder mystery with a series of brief
meditations on linguistic and philosophical topics that will be
familiar to readers of Kristeva's nonfiction. Though the whole
enterprise seems just a tad self-indulgent (if not self-important),
it must be said that journalist Stephanie Delacour, who
unofficially investigates the grisly murder of a close friend,
displays a beguiling savoir-faire, and that the parade of suspects
she encounters, including a pompous psychiatrist, a bad-tempered
maid, and a guilt-ridden lover, whose "confession" doesn't fit the
facts of the case, give this occasionally overburdened intellectual
jeu some of the welcome specificity of a down-to-earth
old-fashioned whodunit. (Kirkus Reviews)
This sequel to Julia Kristeva's celebrated allegory The Old Man and
the Wolves returns to the corrupt seaside resort of a mythical
town, where the boundaries between East and West, civilization and
barbarism, and good and evil are erased. Part mystery, part
meditation, this engrossing tale features the return of Parisian
amateur detective and newspaper reporter Stephanie Delacour
(Kristeva's alter ego), drawn into the mystery of a friend's
murder. The story opens with the gruesome discovery of the
decapitated body of gifted translator Gloria Harrison. Delacour
finds herself participating in the investigation in the company of
Detective Superintendent Northrup Rilsky. As the mystery unfolds,
Delacour veers away from Rilsky's investigation, on to a trail that
leads to the real killer. Kristeva uses the classic thriller genre
to animate the themes that run through her work as a linguist and
philosopher. While Stephanie Delacour probes a brilliant gallery of
suspects, we read between the lines some of the sorrows and
dilemmas that are the focus of Kristeva's own life and work:
motherhood and the complex relationship between mother and child;
art and music; psychoanalysis; mourning and melancholia; language;
the powers of horror; and the hostility aroused by a competent,
gifted, and attractive woman who is at once devotedly maternal and
capable of sexual passion.
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