Having spent so long on L'étranger (see materials at www.letranger.co.uk) and its underlying notion that not loving one's mother is good enough to send you to the guillotine, the narrative of Vipère came as quite a shock.
The narrator, the middle of three sons suffers at the hand of a cold, calculating and cruel mother who only returns from China with her husband to the family mansion after the children's grandmother dies. The children's life is turned upside down and I would hate to spoil your enjoyment of the sadistic method's "Folcoche" the mother employs to torture her offspring as well as the staff.
The hen-pecked father who is passionate about insects and aims to get a species named after the family provides light relief from the relentless determination of the mother to beat down her children.
As Brasse-Bouillon, the narrator, gets older he becomes every more rebellious and is horrified to realized that he is so like his mother in many ways that he can anticipate her malevolent actions and counter them to good effect.
As a coming of age novel Vipère au poing is quite unusual and there are two sequels about the Vezeau family which I'm keen to read now. However the sheer determination and relentless desire of "Folcoche" to get one over on her own kids tempts me to call her the "Muminator".
Anyone shocked at the methods employed by the head at Fond de l'Etang in Les Choristes will think twice on seeing the damage a mother can inflict with a table fork!
Whilst there is a recent film to accompany the book nothing can reach the levels of intense mutual hatred between sons and mother in this strangely enjoyable work. Will we cover the novel on alevelfrench.com: I'd like to think so but would like to find out if anyone is studying it first.
Here's the first part of the film for the curious.
