Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
Tarantula
Tarantula | Thierry Jonquet
5 posts | 3 read | 5 to read
Richard Lafargue is an eminent plastic surgeon haunted by dirty secrets. He has an operating theatre in the basement of his chateau and keeps his partner Eve imprisoned in her bedroom, a room he has equipped with an intercom and 300-watt speakers through which he bellows orders. Eve is only allowed out to be paraded at cocktail parties and on the last Sunday of each month, when the couple visit a young woman in a mental asylum. Following these outings, Lafargue humiliates Eve by forcing her to perform lewd sexual acts with strangers while he watches through a one-way mirror. In alternating chapters, Jonquet introduces seemingly unrelated characters - a criminal on the run after murdering a policeman, and an abducted young man who finds himself chained naked in a dark chamber, forced to endure all manner of physical torture at the hands of a mysterious stranger, whom he calls Mygale, after a type of tropical spider. All of these characters are caught in a deceitful web, waiting to meet their fate.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
blurb
vivastory
Mygale: City Lights Noir | Thierry Jonquet, Donald Nicholson-Smith
post image

This gritty, bleak novella was the basis for the 2011 Pedro Almodovar film The Skin I Live In. I have not seen the Almodovar movie, however I do recall seeing trailers for the movie & immediately thinking of Georges Franju's 1960 movie Eyes Without a Face, one of the first Criterion Collection movies I ever watched. This is a deeply unsettling work of transgressive fiction that I wouldn't recommend to many. As The Complete Review states (cont)

vivastory “Mygale . . . is, appropriately enough, a spider web of a book, the different threads spun out until it all comes together in its very neat design. Jonquet serves up some extremely unlikely coincidences to get it to all fit together, but most of what he dishes up is so bizarre that one can almost overlook that..Jonquet spins out several threads separately, jumping from one to the other until they finally all come together.“ Upon finishing (cont) 10mo
vivastory Mygale rather than watching the Almodovar adaptation, I opted to revisit the Franju. I didn't think it was possible, but it was even better the second time around.
Book 10 of #MidwayBOTY23
(edited) 10mo
Lesliereadsalot I thought Almodovar‘s movie was extremely disturbing, although I usually recommend all his movies. I was mostly in awe watching it, as my skin crawled! 10mo
vivastory @Lesliereadsalot I plan on eventually watching it as I do really like his films. While at the library yesterday I saw that he had also adapted a series of linked stories by Alice Munro. I was unaware of the book and the movie but both sound great. 10mo
Reggie That Almodovar movie was crazypants. My favorite of his is Volver followed by Sobre de Mi Mama, La Mala Educacion, La Ley de Deseo and Habla Con Ella. 10mo
48 likes5 comments
review
Ast_Arslan
Mygale: City Lights Noir | Thierry Jonquet, Donald Nicholson-Smith
post image
Pickpick

There's no time for kindness in this book, no time for mercy.
#Mygale is a short but impressive ride into madness and into revenge.
There are three main characters and none of them are innocent. They all have sins to be expiated in the most cruel way.
The written style is cold and incisive as a blow from a scalpel. Maybe the ending is a little bit too hasty, but is definitely a short book hard to forget.

blurb
Ast_Arslan
Mygale: City Lights Noir | Thierry Jonquet, Donald Nicholson-Smith
post image

I saw the movie (The skin I live in) long time ago and it was so disturbing that I've been curios about the book since then.
I already know it will be different about the Almodovar's work but I hope to like it, even because I'm not sure if I appreciated or not the movie 😅

#mygale #ThierryJonquet #ebook #disturbingcover

Palimpsest I have not read this book, but this is one of the most disturbing movies I‘ve ever seen! I‘ll have to watch for your book review. 3y
Ast_Arslan @Palimpsest it's a short novel, so it shouldn't take me longer to finish it 😁 the reading so far is quite disturbing too 😆 3y
21 likes1 stack add2 comments
review
RiaWritten
Mygale: City Lights Noir | Thierry Jonquet, Donald Nicholson-Smith
post image
Bailedbailed

I'm trying to get better about not finishing books I'm not enjoying and this was one. Didn't love the style and had already seen the movie. Didn't really feel worth even its meager page count.

MrBook Not every one is a winner. 👍🏻 7y
18 likes1 comment