A novella that reads very much like a bad dream, horrible but with a distinct lack of focus. It's the story of a brother and sister, devoted to each other and out of touch with reality, who, due to circumstance and the death of their mother, are left to fend for themselves in the world.

There's not much time to explore their relationship in detail, the author just gives us brief glimpses as to their bizarre interaction - the 'game' they play which excludes others, their own private language, their physical intimacy which borders on the incestuous. It's a meandering, hot house of a story. The emotional crescendo following the introduction of 'outsiders' into the complex central relationship is dramatically handled and the whole thing sweeps to a conclusion only a Frenchman could write.

Surely the inspiration for the 2003 film The Dreamers and both the film and this novel are worth a look in their own right.

Incestuous rewerite of Rome and Juliet ( )

Having never even read Jean Cocteau's poetry, I was completely unprepared for this disturbing story. It starts out innocently enough, with a childhood snowball fight, but the reader is soon enveloped in the fantasy world created by Paul and his sister Elisabeth. But as they grow older, and their competing magnetic personalities enslave their friends, they find themselves almost completely removed from reality and heading toward disaster. Paul and Elisabeth and neither likable or unlikable...they seem to be completely above our likes and dislikes.

This book is a fairly quick and easy read, but it's still rich in its language and with unforgettable characters. It should also appeal to a wide range of readers. Anyone who enjoys French literature, psychological drama, Shakespearean tragedies, or fantasy fiction will really enjoy this book. ( )

A short novel of incest and willful derangement of the senses. Paul and Elizabeth are two orphans who have created their own world within a squalid Monmartre room. Their scant physical needs are satisfied by well-meaning, if oblivious, others - a device which enables the two, and their two acolytes, to practice a sustained indifference to the world at large. A sadomasochistic injury from a young tough whom Paul adores sends him to convalese in the room he shares with his sister, and the "game" which they have always practiced, a sort of self-induced trance which atrophies their emotions, becomes intense. Others enter into the picture, but they are mere objects, as meaningless as the "treasury" of torn paper and empty bottles which the two collect.

As the children grow, so does the intensity of their love/hate relationship. Paul's role as master of the game is usurped as he begins to feel, in a friend of his sister, a resurgence of the adoration he formerly felt for the cruel and aloof Dargelos. Elizabeth, who has instilled within herself a supreme hardening of the emotions, manipulates the two in an effort to retain possession of her brother. The bond the siblings share is deep, yet deeply stunted, and the only escape is death. Cocteau's novel is a weird mirror of human relationships - their ability to give meaning to shared experience, as well as their ability to isolate and destroy. 5/99

The story of a most unhealthy relationship between a brother and sister starting in their early teens to young adulthood..They develop their own private 'game' in their room, draw in two friends whom the sister manipulates into marrying so that the female friend does not marry her brother. The brother followed by the sister then commit suicide. A strange relationship where they share a room long past it being appropriate , their friends joining them later. Illustrated by some line drawings.
Surreal. ( )