&sq=Facebook&lang=en&file=File:The_Butterfly_(novel)_1st_edition_1947_with_dust_jacket.jpg) Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | James M. Cain |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Incest literature |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | 1947 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| ISBN | 0-679-72323-4 |
The Butterfly is a hard-boiled novel by author James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1947. The story is set in rural West Virginia in the late 1930s and concerns a mystery surrounding an apparent case of father and daughter incest.[1][2]
Cain's mastery of the first-person confessional point-of-view is evident in this "complex psychological novel."[3] Though Cain was at the height of his literary success at the time of its publication, the taboo subject of the tale precluded a Hollywood adaption.[4] In 1982, the novel was adapted as a movie as Butterfly.
The Butterfly is among Cain's most commercially successful novels.[5]
- ^ Skenazy, 1989 p. 13: "The Butterfly, (1947), a story of incest in the West Virginia Mountains." And p. 95: "The Butterfly is a lean, narrowly focused tale of incest, set in the Appalachian area Cain came to know in the early 1920s."
- ^ Hoopes, 1982 p. 422: "hard-boiled" designation by reviewer Robert Gorman Davis.
- ^ Skenazy, 1989 p. 48: "However manipulative the device can at times seem, the confessional mode is essential to the success of…The Butterfly." And p. 96: "As Albert Van Nostrand and others have noted, The Butterfly is Cain's most complex psychological novel, in which he takes fullest advantage of the technical possibilities of first-person point-of-view…"
- ^ Hoopes, 1982 p. 387: Cain knew The Butterfly "would probably never sell to the movies."And p. 422: "Cain [at] the height of his reputation as a novelist who specialized in shocking his readers…"
- ^ Hoopes, 1982 p. 422: "...The Butterfly achieved Cain's second-highest hard-cover total - 45,000 copies."