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After The Old Man and the Wolves, an acclaimed first novel written after the tragic death of her father, Julia Kristeva ventures again into literature with Possessions. Possessions is a thriller in which the Parisian journalist Stephanie Delacour, after her arrival at Santa Barbara, becomes involved in the investigation of the murder of her friend Gloria Harrison.
Gloria Harrison has been found decapitated in her home, in rather mysterious circumstances, and indeed it is not even clear whether she has taken a rather large dose of barbiturates which rendered her helpless vis-à-vis her aggressor.
Gloria is a literary figure but primarily a translator and she lives alone with her son Jerry, a boy born deaf and mute. As a mother, she soon realises that she needs to teach him everything, even to inhabit his own sensitivity. Later she teaches him ‘to name this divided universe, constructing the spoken language like a foreign language, translate—after all this was her job, her vocation, her destiny'.
Her partner Stan is an exciting but ultimately unreliable artist. As her partner leaves her alone with Jerry, Gloria turns her son into her consuming preoccupation. The passion of motherhood entirely possesses Gloria and she, in turn, entirely possesses her child until she meets another man. The passion for her new lover brings about a further transformation and Gloria becomes a sexual woman, the object of envie, a mixture of envy and desire.
Stephanie Delacour conducts her murder investigation in co-operation with the Detective Superintendent Northrop Rilsky, the last humanist, who believes the determinants of crime to be illiteracy, consumerism, and the decline of thought in all its forms, including luxury thought.
However, more than co-operation, there is rivalry between the two and Stephanie is determined to prove that only a deep knowledge of a woman's mind will provide the key to unravel the mystery.
On another, more personal level, the murder investigation also represents a j