The novel is set in the Landes, a sparsely populated area of south-west France covered largely with pine forests.
Despite strong evidence against her, including prescriptions she forged, the case has been dropped; the family closed ranks to prevent scandal and Bernard himself testified in her defence.
On the journey home, Thérèse reflects at length on her life so far, trying to understand what brought her to continue poisoning her husband after she observed him taking an accidental overdose.
The book is characterised by some unusual structural devices,[citation needed] including a long internal monologue which often switches perspective, revealing the thoughts of several characters.
The vast majority of characters in the book are seen as quite unpleasant people; Thérèse's father is revealed to be a callous sexist more concerned with protecting his political career than looking after his daughter, while Bernard himself is portrayed as an emotionally unavailable man obsessed solely with hunting and serving the needs of the family.
[2] In 1925, Mauriac asked his brother Pierre for documents about the trial in Bordeaux,[3] in 1906, of Madame Canaby, who had attempted to poison her husband.
[5] On 3 June 1950 Le Figaro named it as one of the winners of the "Grand Prix des meilleurs romans du demi-siècle", a prestigious literary competition to find the twelve best French novels of the first half of the twentieth century.
Nominations were judged by a distinguished French literary jury chaired by Colette, and the winners were included the following year in a specially published and illustrated collection.
Jean-Paul Sartre famously attacked his work in 1939, accusing him of denying his characters free will and, like God, imposing external fates and moral judgements on them.