 La Belle Bête is a powerful study of the conflict between beauty and ugliness, hate and love. The story revolves around three main characters. At the center, Patrice, a beautiful but mindless youth stands gazing at his image in the water. Around him move his ugly sister Isabelle-Marie, and his frivolous mother Louise, the first lost in love and hate for her brother s beauty, the second seeing it as an adornment for herself. Into this small, obsessed universe come a blind boy and an elegant fop from the outside world. At once, the pattern breaks and events move forward into a terrifying denouement. This astonishing first novel caused a sensation when it appeared, and catapulted its young French-Canadian author, Marie-Claire Blais into literary stardom.