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Les Mains d'Orlac

Maurice Renard,

Hugues Chabot (Postface),

Claude Deméocq (Préface)

3.63 · Rating details · 35 ratings · 5 reviews

Le pianiste virtuose Stephen Orlac, perd l'usage de ses mains. Après une opération où il s'en fait greffer des nouvelles, il apprend qu'elles proviennent d'un assassin guillotiné ce qui explique pourquoi il est accusé d'atroces meurtres. ...more

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Paperback, 314 pages

Published 2008 by Les Moutons électriques (first published January 1st 1920)

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Oct 02, 2012 Andrea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: in-translation, mystery-noir

This is in some ways a rather bad book, but entirely a delight to read so perhaps it should be a 3 or a 4 but the joy it gave me was all a five. Written in installment form you can see it being made up as Renard goes along. Which is part of the delight really. The language is overblown and rather brilliant, belonging more to the circus or a storyteller's stage.

Like a submarine navigating beneath the waves, only its periscope breaking the surface, the affair never showed above the surface of the

...more

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Oct 09, 2017 Shawn rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: r-nov-pulpthrill-20th-00-40-dno

FIRST TIER
After surviving a terrible accident, the wife of Stephen Orlac finds their life becoming increasingly strange, filled with ominous portents, ghostly figures and, eventually murder. Who would enjoy reading this? Fans of classic horror films interested in the source material, fans of French-pulp era suspense or mystery fiction as well. Those looking for something "weird" from the 1920s, maybe.

SECOND TIER
A popular French novel when published in 1920 (later adapted to film 3 times), here p FIRST TIER
After surviving a terrible accident, the wife of Stephen Orlac finds their life becoming increasingly strange, filled with ominous portents, ghostly figures and, eventually murder. Who would enjoy reading this? Fans of classic horror films interested in the source material, fans of French-pulp era suspense or mystery fiction as well. Those looking for something "weird" from the 1920s, maybe.

SECOND TIER
A popular French novel when published in 1920 (later adapted to film 3 times), here presented in a new English translation. A famous pianist, Stephen Orlac, is nearly killed in a train accident and his wife finds, during his slow convalescence, a number of mysterious events occurring in their household, which ultimately culminate in multiple murder. This is a brisk, if occasionally pulpy/choppy read - you're not getting a "horror" classic as much as a suspense novel of the time, chock-a-block with plot twists and turns. Enjoyable for what it is, but don't expect too much.

THIRD TIER
This book was not what I was expecting (as a slight tangent, I had been waiting on my local library's inter-library loan to get me a copy for 10 months, before I finally went to the library one town over and got it in a week!). By reputation, I had expected a sedate, somewhat eerie story of an injured man slowly finding his identity slipping away. To my surprise (although, in retrospect, it makes perfect sense), THE HANDS OF ORLAC is not a creepy, psychological narrative. Instead, it is a solid piece of French pulp writing. It is perhaps worth noting that the "Pulp Era" in American publishing was mirrored and, in fact, preceded by a similar publishing span in France. The parallels are obvious: fast, brightly told stories, cheaply printed, involving larger than life figures and events - spectacular crimes, eccentric detectives, masked vigilantes (think Fantômas, The Nyctalope, Arsene Lupin, etc.), etc. etc. banged out for the reading public - the next manifestation of the "Sensation Novel" as a form, stripped down (though not as far as the "Penny Dreadfuls" had been over in England) and packed with "low brow" action (although not as juvenile as American "dime novels"). And THE HANDS OF ORLAC is in that same mold. I first began to pick up on it as I realized that every chapter ended on some "shocking" event, statement or moment (if not an actual cliffhanger), which had me suspecting a serialized origin. Then, as inexplicable visions and lurid plot turns began to pile up, I pretty much settled into it. Which, as I said, was not what I was expecting but what are you gonna do?

The book has been adapted to film at least three times (The Hands of Orlac - Austria, 1924; Mad Love - US, 1935 with Peter Lorre; and The Hands of Orlac - French-British, 1960) and I plan on revisiting these film soon, while the story is fresh in my mind. After a terrible train wreck, virtuoso pianist Stephen Orlac lies near death, until wunderkind surgeon Doctor Cerral (known for rash judgments and dubious experiments) agrees to work his magic. Orlac survives, but the damage to his hands seems to rule out any furtherance of his career. Meanwhile, his wife Rosine finds herself experiencing all kinds of odd events: ghostly visions, a glowing "exteriorized" nightmare of Stephen's, bloody knives marked with an X found stuck in doors, the inexplicable theft (and then replacement) of her jewels from a locked strongbox - seemingly the work of the notorious "Infra-Red Gang," what could it all mean? Stephen's rich father (a noted Spiritualist/Occult author upon his retirement) and his flamboyant old friend Tristan de Crochans (an artist who paints "mental landscapes," and benefactor of Stephen's) think that evil spirits may be involved and seances are held (out of the narrative) in which the spirits of dead murderers are cross-examined! Then suddenly, after some murders (one of which seems to have been at the hands of a mannequin!), the police become involved and events take surprising turns.

In truth, this book was more interesting to me for the details than for the main plot or the writing - in the end, it's a febrile suspense novel so the characters are fairly cardboard (although I quite enjoyed Tristan, and the detective introduced late into the narrative had some underdeveloped promise) and they all rush around as "shocking", "inexplicable" things happen (which we eventually suspect will all be explained, probably unsatisfyingly... and our suspicions prove mostly correct) and then happen again (the reader reels!). There's even a late chapter in which all the unanswered, contradictory mysteries are totted up and re-stated for us. Oddly, the plot point for which the films are mostly remembered (if at all) in popular culture - and which I'll put behind a spoiler in case you don't know, but they make the novel an early example of "body horror": (view spoiler) - isn't actually introduced until about 3/4 of the way into the text. Which means that the pacing is very choppy and uneven (in retrospect, a hell of a lot of time is spent on Rosine and the ramp-up to the story) and the ending feels very rushed. Also, our main narrative character jarringly shifts half-way through, from Rosine Orlac to the Court Reporter Breteuil.

The details scattered throughout are interesting, however. The book's preface essentially serves the same purpose of modern "based on true events" title cards in horror films, which made me chuckle. There is a sense in the narrative of characters living in a culture which on the one hand is still suffused with superstition (spirit mediums and seances are a heavy ingredient) while, on the other, are dealing with advances in science and technology (film projectors, high-tech surgery, phonographs all play important parts). As well, the very cultural source from which this story originates - the hothouse publishing pulp environment - is reflected in the characters ("Ah literature!" he cried "What an education you're giving these clever young people!" Dr. Cerral says when Rosine asks about possible "experiments"), how they view events (often compared by them to cinema, serials or fantastic-detective literature), and their expectations and fears. The whole sub-plot of the "Infra-Red Gang" is pure pulp but fun for all that. There's a nice bit where the reporter, musing on the seemingly mannequin murder, briefly envisions various living automata from popular culture (Galatea, Hadaly, The Venus of Ille and Olympia all get referenced) and later there's a similar run-through of "enchanted hand" fictions.

But, in the end, it's a pulpy "much of muchness." The ride is only worth it relative to your tolerance for this type of stuff - I don't find myself drawn to reading much of it, because I deal with it a lot in my day job, but the book was certainly engaging and, as I said, I liked the energetic, endlessly upbeat and jovial Tristan de Crochans. YMMV. ...more

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Mar 10, 2016 Leonardo rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, crime, fantasy-and-science-fiction, movies-and-tv, mystery-and-horror, novels-and-short-stories, creatures-of-the-night, occultism, science, music

Un thriller desigual, pero con una trama apasionante (y enrevesada) y cliffhangers capítulo tras capítulo, Las manos de Orlac ha sido adaptada al cine en numerosas ocasiones (incluyendo la versión muda protagonizada por Conrad Veidt y la versión protagonizada por Peter Lorre), aunque ninguna de ellas ha logrado capturar todos los aspectos de la novela. Accidentes, mutilaciones, ocultismo, apariciones fantasmagóricas, avances científicos y secretos familiares se entrelazan para contar la historia ...more

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Dec 12, 2010 Mike rated it liked it · review of another edition

It was interesting how different the book was from the films. Spiritualism/seances play a big part of this book and there's some really exciting scenes. I wasn't such a fan of how the story was structured, but maybe that's because I knew where it was going. I read the 1929 first English translation. I'm very curious if the recent translation version is significantly different, I know that's the case with Renard's Doctor Lerne/New Bodies for Old. ...more

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Nov 17, 2012 Julz marked it as wish-list · review of another edition

Synopsis:

This original horror story was the basis of 4 films. 'The terrifyingly ingenious story centres around a world-famous concert pianist, Stephen Orlac, whose hands are horribly mutilated in a train accident. An eminent surgeon grafts on a new pair of hands, but with ghastly results, for Orlac now finds himself possessed, not of musical skills, but by strange and terrible impulses... ...more

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About Maurice Renard

Maurice Renard

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Maurice Renard est un écrivain français né le 28 février 1875 à Châlons-sur-Marne et mort le 18 novembre 1939 à Rochefort.

L'enfance de Maurice est rythmée par des séjours d'été à Hermonville, où ses grands-parents possèdent le château Saint-Rémy (détruit en 1918), et où la famille occupe dans le vaste parc un petit pavillon, le clos Saint-Vincent.
En 1894, il obtient son baccalauréat en lettres et ...more

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Quotes from Les Mains d'Orlac

“The emergency services had not yet been organized.
Rosine could go where she wished. Her high heels made her stumble in the darkness, over the stones, the frozen clods of soil, over the tussocks of grass, the countless obstacles of the rough earth. She was shivering with cold and thought she might be about to faint away amid the sinister din of the disaster.

A fearful chaos was becoming apparent. Rude forms stood erect, the silhouette of a heap of rails. Lanterns, miserable yellow stars, circulated hither and thither. There were even household oil-lamps to be seen, with which the wind dealt harshly. And, all the time, people were running ...” — 0 likes

“The young woman had read a good many novels, and
she had seen a good many films; this education by newspaper, serial and film had, in a thousand and one ways, blunted her sensibilities to the wonderful; reading about and seeing impossible events had prepared her to be un-astonished by the most improbable phenomena. All the same, her terror had brought with it a stupefaction, and the doctor's voice drew her from a species of torpor that came close to swooning.” — 0 likes

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