Vian's final and most serious novel begins with an elegant psychiatrist arriving in a remote town, where he helps deliver the triplets of a woman whose husband is locked up in a bedroom because she abhors him for causing the pain and discomfort of her pregnancy. As the triplets age and Clementine becomes hysterically obsessed with their safety, Timortis spends most of his time searching for patients (he finds only a neutered cat to identify with) and visiting the bizarre village nearby where townspeople attack the local priest at their weekly service, old people are auctioned off at a fair, and an official scapegoat for the citizens' guilt is relegated to fishing junk out of the town river with his teeth. A mix of disturbing incidents and verbal wit, Heartsnatcher is as funny and strange as the best of Raymond Queneau and Eugene Ionesco.
