The Papin Sisters - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Dec, 2002

The Papin Sisters. Rachel Edwards and Keith Reader. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]45.00. 134 pages. ISBN 0-19-816010-0. In 1933, Christine and Lea, housemaids in their twenties stabbed and beat to death their employer, Madame Lancelin, and her daughter, Genevieve, in the family home in Le Mans.

Eyeballs lay on the stairs -- torn from the women with bare hands while they were still alive. This cultural study of the case's repercussions on the writing of Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Genet, the dramatic inspiration of Kesselmann, the film-making of Papatakis, Meckler, and Chabrol, and on the French consciousness generally, provides no answer, but a revelatory questioning of the reason for the horrendous crimes' enduring folkish fascination. (R.W.-E.)