COSTALS AND THE HIPPOGRIFF

by Henry de Montherlant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1940

This was published in France under the title Les Lepreuses (and reviewed as such in the foreign book supplement, December 15, 1939). The English edition bears the title in exact translation, The Lepers. The American edition is entitled Costals and the Hippogriff...The last volume in the Pity for Women tetralogy, that improvisation on the theme of the artist against marriage. Once again one finds the brilliant intellectual assurance, the facile and witty verbosity, but the book is less holding than the others, and acute, brain-spun, mordant as it is, it is fatiguing, monotonous. Costals, satanic misogynist, monstrous egotist, is forced to face marriage; he bolts again, and resumes an affair with an old mistress in Morocco, a leper. There, in sensuality, he thinks he finds the solution, but eventually he returns to Paris, showing his emancipation still incomplete.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1940

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1940

Categories: FICTION