Madame Catherine
After her house in Paris has burned down, killing her lover, Madame Catherine moves to her country home on the banks of a river. One day, on a ship passing by, she espies a ghost waving at her and begins to be consumed by nightmares. A presence watches her, follows her, and touches her in the night. Only when she leaves her country home is she released from the phantom who has it in for her. Catherine gradually loses her mind. Or is something genuinely afoot? She only sees one way out.
Vande Wiele trusts the power of suggestion. A high-class adaptation ****Knack
Following on from ‘Monsieur Bermutier’, this is Maarten Vande Wiele’s second adaption of a work by Guy de Maupassant. In this idiosyncratic version of ‘The Horla’, Vande Wiele ably allows suggestion to do its work. In pencil, he sketches the story of a woman who becomes the victim of a supernatural phenomenon – or is she in fact not the victim? Black shadows reflect the darkness in Catherine herself. ‘Madame Catherine’ is an oppressive graphic novel rendered in a sober style in which the conclusions are left to the reader.
Cold, dispassionate and spine-chilling. Vande Wiele is a complete natural at turning prose into a graphic format.9e Kunst
Suggestive and oppressive. Does full justice to a literary master like De Maupassant. ****Gazet van Antwerpen
