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Adèle
Adèle appears to have the perfect life: She is a successful journalist in Paris who lives in a beautiful apartment with her surgeon husband and their young son. But underneath the surface, she is bored--and consumed by an insatiable need for sex.
Driven less by pleasure than compulsion, Adèle organizes her day around her extramarital affairs, arriving late to work and lying to her husband about where she's been, until she becomes ensnared in a trap of her own making. Suspenseful, erotic, and electrically charged, Adèle is a captivating exploration of addiction, sexuality, and one woman's quest to feel alive.
Driven less by pleasure than compulsion, Adèle organizes her day around her extramarital affairs, arriving late to work and lying to her husband about where she's been, until she becomes ensnared in a trap of her own making. Suspenseful, erotic, and electrically charged, Adèle is a captivating exploration of addiction, sexuality, and one woman's quest to feel alive.
216 pages, Paperback
First published August 8, 2014
About the author
Leïla Slimani
63 books3,125 followersLeïla Slimani is a French writer and journalist of Moroccan ancestry. In 2016 she was awarded the Prix Goncourt for her novel Chanson douce.
Slimani was born in Rabat, Morocco and studied later political science and media studies in Paris. After that she temporarily considered a career as an actress and began to work as a journalist for the magazine Jeune Afrique. In 2014 she published her first novel Dans le jardin de l’ogre, which two years later was followed by the psychological thriller Chanson douce. The latter quickly turned into a bestseller with over 450,000 copies printed within a year even before the book was awarded the Prix Goncourt.
Slimani was born in Rabat, Morocco and studied later political science and media studies in Paris. After that she temporarily considered a career as an actress and began to work as a journalist for the magazine Jeune Afrique. In 2014 she published her first novel Dans le jardin de l’ogre, which two years later was followed by the psychological thriller Chanson douce. The latter quickly turned into a bestseller with over 450,000 copies printed within a year even before the book was awarded the Prix Goncourt.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,844 reviews
April 23, 2023
'Female sexuality is more often associated with lasciviousness and motherhood than with perversion. This is unexplored territory.' Explaining why she chose female sexual addiction as a subject for her debut novel, Leïla Slimani, the French-Moroccan author of the Prix Goncourt winning novel Chanson douce (translated into English as The Perfect Nanny/Lullaby) asserted it was the DSK affair and her bewilderment on how such a strong sexual drive can manage to bring someone down, that inspired her to explore such a drive from the perspective of a woman and to paint this brutal and disconcerting portrayal of a woman in the grip of her body yearning for extreme acts of lewd sex (the ogre in the French title - Dans le jardin de l’ogre (In the Ogre’s Garden)).
In Adèle Slimani focusses on Adèle Robinson, a journalist living in a posh neighbourhood in Paris with her three year old son and her husband, Adèle seems to wrestle with quite some issues, in particular a self-destructive and uncontrollable urge to have sex. Despite the affection she feels for her son and her husband, she can’t resist to seize every opportunity she gets – a dinner party with her husband’s colleagues, a visit of an art gallery, an after work drink - to give her body what it ask for. Balancing on the verge of exhaustion, she tosses herself from one stranger’s bed to another nightly blow job in some grubby alley, organising her life compulsively around her urge, without however taking pleasure from her acts. While denying her body food, she attempt to fill the egregious void in herself with cheerless sex. Like a substance addict she has to score her next shot of fornication to feel alive, to exist: ‘Somewhere in her oblivion is the reassuring feeling that she has existed countless times in the desire of others’. ‘She is hurt and bitter. Tonight she does not manage to exist. Nobody sees her, nobody listens to her.’
Slimani doesn’t burrow into Adèle’s hung-up psyche or thoughts nor judges her, She mostly relies on describing Adèle’s behaviour and the consequences of it on her family life to capture Adèle’s vulnerability and her suffering – from the beginning it is obvious we will read a novel on intense suffering and alienation, as we can tell by the quote from Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem as an epitaph (‘It isn't me, someone else is suffering. I couldn't. Not like this.’). Some parallels with Madame Bovary pour in: like Emma is married to doctor Charles Bovary Adèle’s husband Richard is a (similarly limp) gastroenterologist, and the boredom reigning Adèle’s sophisticated urban life is as seething as Emma’s wilting in provincial life.
What struck me in this novel, as it did in two other works I recently read (Jane Austen’s Lady Susan & John Steinbeck’s short story The Chrysanthemums), is the need of the women protagonists to feel desired in order to have the feeling to exist. This reminded me of the reaction of the former French minister Laurence Rossignol: on the open letter in Le Monde signed by a hundred prominent Françaises criticising the #MeToo and #BalanceTonPorc movements as a puritanical witch-hunt, in which they defend ‘a freedom to importunate necessary for sexual freedom’ (letter also signed by Slimani) on which Rossignol expresses her bafflement with regard to ‘This strange anguish to no longer exist without the gaze and desire of men which drives intelligent women to write huge nonsense’ – which elicited the Belgian historian Anne Morelli (who also signed the open letter) the response we simply have to face that most women exist through the gaze of men.
Do women need that male gaze to feel alive? Sigh. Reflecting on that confronting question the mind totters into troubling territory, unsure whether I can relate to such opinion, or not.
Adèle personifies this need to be seen in an extreme way. She desires to see herself reflected in the desire of men, hooked to their arousal, their responses to her body. A key moment in the novel relates Adèle’s epiphany reading Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, as a young girl, particularly a passage describing how Tereza’s body betrays her by getting excited against her will – this flashback suggesting that the origin of Adèles issues traces back to her youth.
Closing the novel, I wondered which point Slimani intends to make on female sexuality by this study of perversion. Is this a portrait of a pitiful, lonely and sick woman or rather one of an ailing capitalist society where both work and family life are deeply unsatisfying and alienating? Later, having received numerous reactions and personal testimonies of Moroccan women responding to her novel (which resulted in a non-fiction book, Sexe et mensonges (Sex and Lies) she explained in an interview she now considers ‘Adèle as a slightly extreme metaphor for the sexual lives of many Moroccan women, who struggle to reconcile the reality of their private lives with the public narrative of a society in which everyone is supposedly married or a virgin’ and she denounces the Moroccan society to be ‘consumed by the poison of hypocrisy and by an institutionalized culture of lies,’ arguing ‘that repression is as corrosive to society as it is to the psyche.’ She blames a sexually oppressive society for women having a distorted relationship with their bodies, exposing how prohibitions weighing on sexuality result in obsessiveness and mental disorder as ‘everything is done in secret, in a kind of malaise’. And here Kundera’s novel – of which the meditations on body and soul apparently have been of some influence on Slimani- could come into the picture again - ‘When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.’
As the author acknowledges she experiences French society entirely different and far more open and relaxed on sexuality, I am not entirely convinced by what to me comes across as an hineininterpretierung of her own novel, as her protagonist is not Moroccan and seems to live an all but subdued life (at least if marriage and motherhood aren’t synonymous with oppression in Slimani’s view).
Despite Adèle’s obvious suffering and loneliness, I found it almost impossible to empathise with her, as Slimani depicts her protagonist as an utterly unlikeable woman, not because of her sexual debauchery but by underlining what an egotistical, bored and overindulged creature she is as a privileged petite bourgeoise ‘having it all’ – the distance to the character sharpened by Slimani’s detached and chilly style. Staggering to me is not as much the unmistakable rawness of this story or Adèle’s behaviour as such, but her inner emptiness. Whether Slimani’s novel can be categorised as erotic or not, seems to me a matter depending on the personal taste of the reader - unlike other reviewers (and the blurb) I didn’t experience this disengaged account of Adèle’s excesses as erotic. Having recently read The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter’s far wilder and at the same time more tender and sensual imagination in that respect resonated far more with me erotically than Slimani’s bleak exploration of soullessness.
Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I don’t know…
In Adèle Slimani focusses on Adèle Robinson, a journalist living in a posh neighbourhood in Paris with her three year old son and her husband, Adèle seems to wrestle with quite some issues, in particular a self-destructive and uncontrollable urge to have sex. Despite the affection she feels for her son and her husband, she can’t resist to seize every opportunity she gets – a dinner party with her husband’s colleagues, a visit of an art gallery, an after work drink - to give her body what it ask for. Balancing on the verge of exhaustion, she tosses herself from one stranger’s bed to another nightly blow job in some grubby alley, organising her life compulsively around her urge, without however taking pleasure from her acts. While denying her body food, she attempt to fill the egregious void in herself with cheerless sex. Like a substance addict she has to score her next shot of fornication to feel alive, to exist: ‘Somewhere in her oblivion is the reassuring feeling that she has existed countless times in the desire of others’. ‘She is hurt and bitter. Tonight she does not manage to exist. Nobody sees her, nobody listens to her.’
Slimani doesn’t burrow into Adèle’s hung-up psyche or thoughts nor judges her, She mostly relies on describing Adèle’s behaviour and the consequences of it on her family life to capture Adèle’s vulnerability and her suffering – from the beginning it is obvious we will read a novel on intense suffering and alienation, as we can tell by the quote from Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem as an epitaph (‘It isn't me, someone else is suffering. I couldn't. Not like this.’). Some parallels with Madame Bovary pour in: like Emma is married to doctor Charles Bovary Adèle’s husband Richard is a (similarly limp) gastroenterologist, and the boredom reigning Adèle’s sophisticated urban life is as seething as Emma’s wilting in provincial life.
What struck me in this novel, as it did in two other works I recently read (Jane Austen’s Lady Susan & John Steinbeck’s short story The Chrysanthemums), is the need of the women protagonists to feel desired in order to have the feeling to exist. This reminded me of the reaction of the former French minister Laurence Rossignol: on the open letter in Le Monde signed by a hundred prominent Françaises criticising the #MeToo and #BalanceTonPorc movements as a puritanical witch-hunt, in which they defend ‘a freedom to importunate necessary for sexual freedom’ (letter also signed by Slimani) on which Rossignol expresses her bafflement with regard to ‘This strange anguish to no longer exist without the gaze and desire of men which drives intelligent women to write huge nonsense’ – which elicited the Belgian historian Anne Morelli (who also signed the open letter) the response we simply have to face that most women exist through the gaze of men.
Do women need that male gaze to feel alive? Sigh. Reflecting on that confronting question the mind totters into troubling territory, unsure whether I can relate to such opinion, or not.
Adèle personifies this need to be seen in an extreme way. She desires to see herself reflected in the desire of men, hooked to their arousal, their responses to her body. A key moment in the novel relates Adèle’s epiphany reading Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, as a young girl, particularly a passage describing how Tereza’s body betrays her by getting excited against her will – this flashback suggesting that the origin of Adèles issues traces back to her youth.
Closing the novel, I wondered which point Slimani intends to make on female sexuality by this study of perversion. Is this a portrait of a pitiful, lonely and sick woman or rather one of an ailing capitalist society where both work and family life are deeply unsatisfying and alienating? Later, having received numerous reactions and personal testimonies of Moroccan women responding to her novel (which resulted in a non-fiction book, Sexe et mensonges (Sex and Lies) she explained in an interview she now considers ‘Adèle as a slightly extreme metaphor for the sexual lives of many Moroccan women, who struggle to reconcile the reality of their private lives with the public narrative of a society in which everyone is supposedly married or a virgin’ and she denounces the Moroccan society to be ‘consumed by the poison of hypocrisy and by an institutionalized culture of lies,’ arguing ‘that repression is as corrosive to society as it is to the psyche.’ She blames a sexually oppressive society for women having a distorted relationship with their bodies, exposing how prohibitions weighing on sexuality result in obsessiveness and mental disorder as ‘everything is done in secret, in a kind of malaise’. And here Kundera’s novel – of which the meditations on body and soul apparently have been of some influence on Slimani- could come into the picture again - ‘When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.’
As the author acknowledges she experiences French society entirely different and far more open and relaxed on sexuality, I am not entirely convinced by what to me comes across as an hineininterpretierung of her own novel, as her protagonist is not Moroccan and seems to live an all but subdued life (at least if marriage and motherhood aren’t synonymous with oppression in Slimani’s view).
Despite Adèle’s obvious suffering and loneliness, I found it almost impossible to empathise with her, as Slimani depicts her protagonist as an utterly unlikeable woman, not because of her sexual debauchery but by underlining what an egotistical, bored and overindulged creature she is as a privileged petite bourgeoise ‘having it all’ – the distance to the character sharpened by Slimani’s detached and chilly style. Staggering to me is not as much the unmistakable rawness of this story or Adèle’s behaviour as such, but her inner emptiness. Whether Slimani’s novel can be categorised as erotic or not, seems to me a matter depending on the personal taste of the reader - unlike other reviewers (and the blurb) I didn’t experience this disengaged account of Adèle’s excesses as erotic. Having recently read The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter’s far wilder and at the same time more tender and sensual imagination in that respect resonated far more with me erotically than Slimani’s bleak exploration of soullessness.
Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I don’t know…
April 16, 2019
People who are never satisfied destroy everything around them.
The story of the dissatisfied wife isn't a new one. Flaubert and Tolstoy cinched the market on that topic over 150 years ago. But it's still a relevant one, and some might say more authentic when written from the perspective of a female author.
Adèle is a beautiful journalist living in Paris with her doctor husband and young son. On the surface, it is the life of dreams. In reality, she is in hell, feeling dissatisfaction and alienation that can only be quelled (temporarily) by casual sexual encounters. And by casual, I mean CASUAL. Adèle doesn't know or even want these men, isn't attracted by them in any way. What she needs is their attraction. It seems to give her life meaning, at least for a short time, before she tumbles back into a self-loathing-fuelled resolve to stop this dangerous series of betrayals. Because even though she doesn't want her husband sexually, she needs him.
She's pretty awful, this Adèle, but I never fully hated her. Like a drug addict, her behaviour is a compulsion, one that is destroying her, bit by bit. I mean, the girl isn't having fun - at one point she is in a room with two male prostitutes, high on cocaine, and gets one of them to knee her violently in the crotch so she can actually 'feel something'. It's sickening, it's disturbing, and all I felt was pity for her.
These encounters are depressing and repetitive, and there's really nothing erotic about them. She's likely the emptiest person in the world. Her existence is palatable only through the string of male desire that she inspires - is it possible for someone to be this void? To be a container for male attention, and only that?
On one hand, I found this was far superior to and less pretentious than Hausfrau. On the other, the self destructive sex was better treated in Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair. While Adèle reads quickly and easily and has several wonderful passages about loneliness and isolation, at the end, this book was about as satisfying as Adèle's sex life. I sat with my reading of it, and felt empty, like the protagonist. I didn’t learn anything from the hours I spent watching a woman seek male gaze to the detriment of herself and everyone around her.
My mind just keeps searching for the purpose in all of this mindless fucking. While I've heard this book described as "subversive", I'm inclined to say this is the opposite of subversive writing. Intentionally or not, Slimani is perpetuating the age-old idea of female objectification. And that, friends, is boring.
2.5 stars
The story of the dissatisfied wife isn't a new one. Flaubert and Tolstoy cinched the market on that topic over 150 years ago. But it's still a relevant one, and some might say more authentic when written from the perspective of a female author.
Adèle is a beautiful journalist living in Paris with her doctor husband and young son. On the surface, it is the life of dreams. In reality, she is in hell, feeling dissatisfaction and alienation that can only be quelled (temporarily) by casual sexual encounters. And by casual, I mean CASUAL. Adèle doesn't know or even want these men, isn't attracted by them in any way. What she needs is their attraction. It seems to give her life meaning, at least for a short time, before she tumbles back into a self-loathing-fuelled resolve to stop this dangerous series of betrayals. Because even though she doesn't want her husband sexually, she needs him.
She's pretty awful, this Adèle, but I never fully hated her. Like a drug addict, her behaviour is a compulsion, one that is destroying her, bit by bit. I mean, the girl isn't having fun - at one point she is in a room with two male prostitutes, high on cocaine, and gets one of them to knee her violently in the crotch so she can actually 'feel something'. It's sickening, it's disturbing, and all I felt was pity for her.
These encounters are depressing and repetitive, and there's really nothing erotic about them. She's likely the emptiest person in the world. Her existence is palatable only through the string of male desire that she inspires - is it possible for someone to be this void? To be a container for male attention, and only that?
On one hand, I found this was far superior to and less pretentious than Hausfrau. On the other, the self destructive sex was better treated in Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair. While Adèle reads quickly and easily and has several wonderful passages about loneliness and isolation, at the end, this book was about as satisfying as Adèle's sex life. I sat with my reading of it, and felt empty, like the protagonist. I didn’t learn anything from the hours I spent watching a woman seek male gaze to the detriment of herself and everyone around her.
My mind just keeps searching for the purpose in all of this mindless fucking. While I've heard this book described as "subversive", I'm inclined to say this is the opposite of subversive writing. Intentionally or not, Slimani is perpetuating the age-old idea of female objectification. And that, friends, is boring.
2.5 stars
July 2, 2019
FIVE STARS
Adèle is about a doctor’s wife who is a mother to a young son. She appears so happy with all the pleasures of financial success and a career as a journalist. She appreciates her role in life for the social status it affords her and, most importantly, for the useful cover it provides for her secret compulsion.
As in The Perfect Nanny, Leila Slimani dives way below the surface to expose the nakedness, the self that controls our desires, obsessions, and motivations. THE PERFECT NANNY was about a seemingly flawless nanny who ended up killing her two young charges. Who are these women that are so very different than they appear? They want to belong to society. They don’t want to be outcasts so they marry, have children, work at respectable careers---YET, this doesn’t mean they are able to quash their secret SELF.
In this case, Adele suffers from sex addiction. She is never formally diagnosed in the story, but obviously Adele is completely unable to stop herself. When she is forced to give up the desires for mere days, she becomes so depressed that she’s almost catatonic. The withdrawal is so painful for her, you can easily see that sex is a drug for her. She must have it to survive. Without it, she may as well be dead.
Psychopathy and personality disorders are undoubtedly fun to read about in fiction. But, what if your sister was suffering like Adele? This extremely dark novel reads like a true story, a horrible story; one that has you wincing, yet unable to tear your eyes away from the page. The extreme sex she craves and willingly submits to, the violence she longs to have her body subjected to….is almost too much to read.
Just like THE PERFECT NANNY, Slimani barely skims the reasons WHY her characters are the way they are. What causes these personality flaws? Adele had a bad relationship with her mother, but basically there aren’t any reasons given. Instead, Slimani concentrates on the effects of the “disorder” and the devastating human toll it takes on family members and friends.
I love deep analytical character diving and found this novel absolutely fascinating. There are not any big reveals or twists, but the inside glimpse at this woman’s life is perfectly gripping. I admire the realistic ending. Slimani is an intelligent, beautiful writer. I will read anything she writes!
Adèle is about a doctor’s wife who is a mother to a young son. She appears so happy with all the pleasures of financial success and a career as a journalist. She appreciates her role in life for the social status it affords her and, most importantly, for the useful cover it provides for her secret compulsion.
As in The Perfect Nanny, Leila Slimani dives way below the surface to expose the nakedness, the self that controls our desires, obsessions, and motivations. THE PERFECT NANNY was about a seemingly flawless nanny who ended up killing her two young charges. Who are these women that are so very different than they appear? They want to belong to society. They don’t want to be outcasts so they marry, have children, work at respectable careers---YET, this doesn’t mean they are able to quash their secret SELF.
In this case, Adele suffers from sex addiction. She is never formally diagnosed in the story, but obviously Adele is completely unable to stop herself. When she is forced to give up the desires for mere days, she becomes so depressed that she’s almost catatonic. The withdrawal is so painful for her, you can easily see that sex is a drug for her. She must have it to survive. Without it, she may as well be dead.
Psychopathy and personality disorders are undoubtedly fun to read about in fiction. But, what if your sister was suffering like Adele? This extremely dark novel reads like a true story, a horrible story; one that has you wincing, yet unable to tear your eyes away from the page. The extreme sex she craves and willingly submits to, the violence she longs to have her body subjected to….is almost too much to read.
Just like THE PERFECT NANNY, Slimani barely skims the reasons WHY her characters are the way they are. What causes these personality flaws? Adele had a bad relationship with her mother, but basically there aren’t any reasons given. Instead, Slimani concentrates on the effects of the “disorder” and the devastating human toll it takes on family members and friends.
I love deep analytical character diving and found this novel absolutely fascinating. There are not any big reveals or twists, but the inside glimpse at this woman’s life is perfectly gripping. I admire the realistic ending. Slimani is an intelligent, beautiful writer. I will read anything she writes!
February 25, 2019
Drab...dreary...formulaic writing!
I kept reading hoping for something to grab me emotionally or intellectually....
I was ‘surprised’ - really surprised - that a potentially intriguing topic could possibly be so down right dull and boring!
Maybe that’s the point of empty meaningless sex...
Dull...
Dull...
Dull!!!!
I kept reading hoping for something to grab me emotionally or intellectually....
I was ‘surprised’ - really surprised - that a potentially intriguing topic could possibly be so down right dull and boring!
Maybe that’s the point of empty meaningless sex...
Dull...
Dull...
Dull!!!!
January 29, 2019
Slimani claims she wrote this novel after being inspired by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, wanting, she said, to look at the phenomenon of sex addiction through a female perspective. I'm not sure I believe her. And even if I did, I'm not sure that would be a useful lens through which to examine this book: for one thing, I doubt whether Strauss-Kahn was really a sex addict, rather than just a sleazy politician comfortable with abusing his power; and for another thing, I think in the DSK case his maleness was pretty essential to the power dynamics involved, which means that transposing the genders misses half the point.
Even setting all that stuff aside, though, involves quite an interesting engagement with the text – and you're still left with this intense and surprisingly believable description of a woman stuck in a self-destructive spiral of risky sex and shitty life decisions. Adèle Robinson lives in a plush apartment in the 18th; she's married to a surgeon who dotes on her; she has a small son; she has a comfortable job as a journalist. And she keeps up a double life of rough one-night stands and emotionless affairs.
Adèle fucks anyone and everyone: her husband's colleagues, random strangers, family friends, professionals. She hires hotel rooms, drags them into alleyways, drops to her knees in the cloakrooms of dinner parties. She's not attracted to her partners: she just needs to know that she is wanted, desired, she just needs to feel that rush of physical sexual response. ‘Elle n'aspire qu'à être voulue.’
She is, let's be clear, an absolute monster. The way she treats her husband, her son and her few friends is appalling, and Slimani builds up these details with the relentless concentration of someone working a razorblade under your toenail. The low point for me came when Adèle took advantage of her husband's being in hospital to hire two male prostitutes to come round to her flat with some cocaine, and then reached for one of her little son's cartoon DVDs on which to cut up some lines. At this detail I felt such a rush of hatred that I actually laughed out loud.
And yet while Adèle is spectacularly unpleasant, she is never unbelievable. You can even almost understand her. Her life is deeply unfulfilling; her husband, who seems to love her, is a stultifying presence, parenthood is a weight around her neck, and her own mother has clearly been a lifelong source of vicious emotional blackmail. Adèle's fear of death, her terror of getting older, also feed into her compulsion to prove that her body can still generate intensity – can spark something, even if what it sparks becomes increasingly masochistic. Her quest for this sensation renders all ‘friendships, ambitions, schedules, impossible’.
Perhaps it's this characterisation which makes the book work for me. When I finished it, I was left with the difficult problem of understanding why I had liked it so much, when I was so unmoved by Jill Alexander Essbaum's Hausfrau, a book with a very similar plot and set-up, but in Zurich instead of Paris. Essbaum's protagonist just irritated me; Adèle, by contrast, manages to be both more loathsome and more sympathetic. Adèle's fate is also less melodramatic, and did not strike me in the same way as a case of punitive moralising. This also has a terrific sense of place – it's a great Paris novel, full of the city's meaningful geography, and Adèle herself is a quintessential Parisienne, who feels an existential horror at her husband's plan to move to a big house en province.
It's also interesting for metatextual reasons. Tahar Ben Jelloun, reviewing it for one of the French papers, pointed out that most Moroccan novelists produce a first book about the maghrebain experience, whereas this is a purely French novel. And it really is – not just in the putative link with the DSK affair, but in the whole context of French sexual politics, which are so different from those in England or the US. Though there are intriguing hints of North African awareness in here – the story takes place against the background of the Tunisian Revolution, and Adèle's father, Kader, is (we can infer) from the region.
These and other details suggest that Dans le jardin de l'ogre may have more autobiographical resonance than is first apparent. Either way, anyone willing to accompany Adèle on her journey will find that the experience can be challenging, and upsetting, but also unexpectedly rewarding.
(September 2018)
This is today's Book of the day in The Guardian – the article misunderstands the novel in crucial ways, I think, but the set-up is pretty well captured: ‘What if you immured yourself in an utterly respectable life and then tried to fuck your way out of it?’ (Incidentally, it turns out that a lot of the mysterious motivations of this book can be clarified with reference to Slimani's later Sexe et mensonges.)
(January 2019)
Even setting all that stuff aside, though, involves quite an interesting engagement with the text – and you're still left with this intense and surprisingly believable description of a woman stuck in a self-destructive spiral of risky sex and shitty life decisions. Adèle Robinson lives in a plush apartment in the 18th; she's married to a surgeon who dotes on her; she has a small son; she has a comfortable job as a journalist. And she keeps up a double life of rough one-night stands and emotionless affairs.
Adèle fucks anyone and everyone: her husband's colleagues, random strangers, family friends, professionals. She hires hotel rooms, drags them into alleyways, drops to her knees in the cloakrooms of dinner parties. She's not attracted to her partners: she just needs to know that she is wanted, desired, she just needs to feel that rush of physical sexual response. ‘Elle n'aspire qu'à être voulue.’
She is, let's be clear, an absolute monster. The way she treats her husband, her son and her few friends is appalling, and Slimani builds up these details with the relentless concentration of someone working a razorblade under your toenail. The low point for me came when Adèle took advantage of her husband's being in hospital to hire two male prostitutes to come round to her flat with some cocaine, and then reached for one of her little son's cartoon DVDs on which to cut up some lines. At this detail I felt such a rush of hatred that I actually laughed out loud.
And yet while Adèle is spectacularly unpleasant, she is never unbelievable. You can even almost understand her. Her life is deeply unfulfilling; her husband, who seems to love her, is a stultifying presence, parenthood is a weight around her neck, and her own mother has clearly been a lifelong source of vicious emotional blackmail. Adèle's fear of death, her terror of getting older, also feed into her compulsion to prove that her body can still generate intensity – can spark something, even if what it sparks becomes increasingly masochistic. Her quest for this sensation renders all ‘friendships, ambitions, schedules, impossible’.
Perhaps it's this characterisation which makes the book work for me. When I finished it, I was left with the difficult problem of understanding why I had liked it so much, when I was so unmoved by Jill Alexander Essbaum's Hausfrau, a book with a very similar plot and set-up, but in Zurich instead of Paris. Essbaum's protagonist just irritated me; Adèle, by contrast, manages to be both more loathsome and more sympathetic. Adèle's fate is also less melodramatic, and did not strike me in the same way as a case of punitive moralising. This also has a terrific sense of place – it's a great Paris novel, full of the city's meaningful geography, and Adèle herself is a quintessential Parisienne, who feels an existential horror at her husband's plan to move to a big house en province.
It's also interesting for metatextual reasons. Tahar Ben Jelloun, reviewing it for one of the French papers, pointed out that most Moroccan novelists produce a first book about the maghrebain experience, whereas this is a purely French novel. And it really is – not just in the putative link with the DSK affair, but in the whole context of French sexual politics, which are so different from those in England or the US. Though there are intriguing hints of North African awareness in here – the story takes place against the background of the Tunisian Revolution, and Adèle's father, Kader, is (we can infer) from the region.
These and other details suggest that Dans le jardin de l'ogre may have more autobiographical resonance than is first apparent. Either way, anyone willing to accompany Adèle on her journey will find that the experience can be challenging, and upsetting, but also unexpectedly rewarding.
(September 2018)
This is today's Book of the day in The Guardian – the article misunderstands the novel in crucial ways, I think, but the set-up is pretty well captured: ‘What if you immured yourself in an utterly respectable life and then tried to fuck your way out of it?’ (Incidentally, it turns out that a lot of the mysterious motivations of this book can be clarified with reference to Slimani's later Sexe et mensonges.)
(January 2019)
September 8, 2018
It's been a long time since a book has left me bereft of words. For reasons unknown to me, I was immediately drawn to this book from the moment I read the synopsis and as soon as I downloaded it I abandoned the book I was previously reading, hell, I abandoned my life, and found myself immersed in this book, finishing it in one sitting.
Adèle is, seemingly, the contented wife of a surgeon, raising a son that she adores while excelling at her job as a journalist. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, could be farther from the truth.
I don't know what I was expecting when I started this book but, whatever it was, I didn't get it and THANK YOU TO THE BOOK GODS!! This is not a mystery, nor a thriller, and it is certainly not erotic fiction. This story is dark, like dark dark, like suffocatingly dark, featuring the taboo subject of sex addiction.
Following Adèle on her downward spiral into the enslavement of her need for sex with strangers is not unlike that of any other addiction, I could have easily been reading a book about a heroin addict. It's not the sexual release Adèle seeks but the thrill, the high from the adrenalin, the danger and the pain that she feels and, as the reader, it is terrifying.
"Men rescued her from her childhood. They dragged her from the mud of adolescence and she traded childish passivity for the lasciviousness of a geisha."
Leila Slimani is an incredible writer with a style all her own. With this book she has managed to build a morose, tension-filled masterpiece filled with nuances that add incredible depth to an already deep subject. I imagine some readers will be disappointed with the ending but for me it was nothing short of sublime, genius storytelling, leaving me raw with emotion. Not every story should be wrapped up and presented to the reader with a big red bow.
I was provided an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Adèle is, seemingly, the contented wife of a surgeon, raising a son that she adores while excelling at her job as a journalist. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, could be farther from the truth.
I don't know what I was expecting when I started this book but, whatever it was, I didn't get it and THANK YOU TO THE BOOK GODS!! This is not a mystery, nor a thriller, and it is certainly not erotic fiction. This story is dark, like dark dark, like suffocatingly dark, featuring the taboo subject of sex addiction.
Following Adèle on her downward spiral into the enslavement of her need for sex with strangers is not unlike that of any other addiction, I could have easily been reading a book about a heroin addict. It's not the sexual release Adèle seeks but the thrill, the high from the adrenalin, the danger and the pain that she feels and, as the reader, it is terrifying.
"Men rescued her from her childhood. They dragged her from the mud of adolescence and she traded childish passivity for the lasciviousness of a geisha."
Leila Slimani is an incredible writer with a style all her own. With this book she has managed to build a morose, tension-filled masterpiece filled with nuances that add incredible depth to an already deep subject. I imagine some readers will be disappointed with the ending but for me it was nothing short of sublime, genius storytelling, leaving me raw with emotion. Not every story should be wrapped up and presented to the reader with a big red bow.
I was provided an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
September 6, 2020
After reading “The Perfect Nanny”, I was captivated by Leila Slimani’s writing style. She writes with a direct and edgy style that is straight to the point. Slimani follows up with an exploration of sexual addiction and another character that feels compelled to detach herself from reality. “Adele” is different than “The Perfect Nanny”. In “The Perfect Nanny” she examines a woman who most people wouldn’t consider successful; a nanny that doesn’t have a “traditional” life. In contrast, “Adele” follows a character that has a stereotypical life. Adele is married, she is a successful journalist, and she has a son with her husband. Slimani reminds us that one’s social status doesn’t disqualify them from the feeling that their lives are unsatisfying and mundane.
The story follows Adele, a successful journalist in Paris. She has a seemingly perfect life with her husband, Richard and her son, Lucien. Despite all of this, Adele has a void within herself that she feels the need to fill. She does so by having anonymous and detached sex with different men in secret. She isn’t driven by love or affection, she’s driven by cumpulsion. “Adele is neither proud nor ashamed of her conquests. She keeps no records, recollects no names, no situations. She forgets everything very quickly.”
Readers who know addiction well, understand that sex could be interchangeable with any vice; gambling, eating, smoking, drugs. All of these addictions could be considered self-destructive and they can all come with judgment from others. However, Slimani does a great job of examining the negative effects of Adele’s addiction without judgment. She also steers away from looking into why Adele feels an insatiable need for sex all of the time. Some readers may be turned off by this but I think that’s the genius behind Slimani’s style. Slimani would rather readers focus on the characters and the demons inside their heads than try to psychoanalyze the cause of the characters actions.
The story follows Adele, a successful journalist in Paris. She has a seemingly perfect life with her husband, Richard and her son, Lucien. Despite all of this, Adele has a void within herself that she feels the need to fill. She does so by having anonymous and detached sex with different men in secret. She isn’t driven by love or affection, she’s driven by cumpulsion. “Adele is neither proud nor ashamed of her conquests. She keeps no records, recollects no names, no situations. She forgets everything very quickly.”
Readers who know addiction well, understand that sex could be interchangeable with any vice; gambling, eating, smoking, drugs. All of these addictions could be considered self-destructive and they can all come with judgment from others. However, Slimani does a great job of examining the negative effects of Adele’s addiction without judgment. She also steers away from looking into why Adele feels an insatiable need for sex all of the time. Some readers may be turned off by this but I think that’s the genius behind Slimani’s style. Slimani would rather readers focus on the characters and the demons inside their heads than try to psychoanalyze the cause of the characters actions.
January 2, 2019
Oh me, oh my! What did I just read???
This is a story about a young Parisian woman married to her surgeon husband with whom she has a young son. She is a successful journalist and her life appears to be perfect to anyone that may cast a glance her way, however, there is something stirring within Adele that she is unable to resist.
Adele suffers from sex addiction which she keeps hidden away from everyone except her very best friend, Lauren, who is growing weary with covering up for Adele's infidelities.
If you read Leila Slimani's book The Perfect Nanny then you know that she isn't an author that is afraid to go there and here we have another perfect example of being inside the mind of a woman that is not at all a pleasant place to be. I was a little hesitant with this one only because I don't really enjoy erotica or tons of gratuitous sex scenes in my books and obviously with the main character being a sex addict I thought that maybe I was venturing out of my comfort zone too much. However, because I loved The Perfect Nanny and her writing style I new I'd have to at least attempt this one. Here's the thing, there is nothing erotic about this book and while it's scenes were described in detail it was absolutely essential in order to tell this story and to do it proper justice. A very high "ick" factor with this one. If you think you can handle the subject matter then you will be rewarded with a fascinating character study of a disturbed mind.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Publishing for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.
This is a story about a young Parisian woman married to her surgeon husband with whom she has a young son. She is a successful journalist and her life appears to be perfect to anyone that may cast a glance her way, however, there is something stirring within Adele that she is unable to resist.
Adele suffers from sex addiction which she keeps hidden away from everyone except her very best friend, Lauren, who is growing weary with covering up for Adele's infidelities.
If you read Leila Slimani's book The Perfect Nanny then you know that she isn't an author that is afraid to go there and here we have another perfect example of being inside the mind of a woman that is not at all a pleasant place to be. I was a little hesitant with this one only because I don't really enjoy erotica or tons of gratuitous sex scenes in my books and obviously with the main character being a sex addict I thought that maybe I was venturing out of my comfort zone too much. However, because I loved The Perfect Nanny and her writing style I new I'd have to at least attempt this one. Here's the thing, there is nothing erotic about this book and while it's scenes were described in detail it was absolutely essential in order to tell this story and to do it proper justice. A very high "ick" factor with this one. If you think you can handle the subject matter then you will be rewarded with a fascinating character study of a disturbed mind.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Publishing for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.
April 4, 2022
There is something about leila slimani’s writing and stories that seem to resonate with me. Something I can’t quite put my finger on. Her writing is honest and unglamorous and just makes sense to me.
Similar to her previous novel, this one also seemed to be more of a character study. A very interesting one that wasn’t happy but nonetheless honest and realistic.
Similar to her previous novel, this one also seemed to be more of a character study. A very interesting one that wasn’t happy but nonetheless honest and realistic.
January 13, 2019
Strangely disturbing read. It deals with sex but it’s not a porn though it’s no use to seek erotic tension either. The main protagonist, Adele, is a young woman. Rather unfulfilled journalist, mother of little Lucien and devoted wife to her husband, Richard. This is her face she shows to the world. Adele is addicted to sex. Hotel rooms, stairwells, back alleys, restrooms. The dirtier and uglier places the better to get what her body wants. The young, the old, handsome or revolting, stranger or neighbour, colleague from work or her husband’s friend. No matter who. She doesn’t seek love nor she gets it. She pursues something else.
Not sure what to make of the novel. It’s quite well written but leaves me somewhat confused. I assume it had to be a kind of psychological study of a person in the grip of addiction, in a tangle of desires impossible to satiate. Some readers perhaps will see there hidden, erotic fantasies of the author though I don’t read it that way. But I struggle to understand it. And it doesn’t help the novel has any likeable protagonist. Even Lucien, Adele’s boy, is tetchy and mostly irritating little shit. The same with Richard, he seems to love Adele, but, by Lord, he rather adores her than something else. Perhaps he will build her improvised altar yet to worship object of his affection. It’s highly dysfunctional family, we get a glimpse yet of her parents and relationships with Rachard's family as well, and I think Slimani rather managed to render Adele’s inner life pretty well. My problem is that I couldn’t care about her at all. It was all the same to me if Richard will finally learn out about her activities or will she escape with her double life. Slimani wrote cold, almost clinical report on unhappy woman that I couldn’t relate to.
In a way Adele reminds her more known literary predecessor, Emma Bovary. Okay, okay, I can hear you. It’s different league. I can see that. But I thought some likeness was not that coincidental. Adele, though rather unpleasant figure, felt to me believable. I could see her tiredness, I could feel the boredom that ate her away yet something was off. Something lacked.
January 23, 2019
Rating:
- Disjointedness. -1 star
- Background / insights lacking: the what, the why, the how, the what for? - 1 star
- Seriously? No one ever noticed anything? Ouch. And she never got any illnesses? Not even some mild gonorrhea case? -1 star
- While this is an interesting vignette of a nymphomaniac being her sex addicted self, it's not engaging or giving enough background or even an interconnected plot. We got a male parade, which is a chore to read, which is probably the way it was intended to be. Still… not inspiring or anything. - 1 star
Q
His wife had been a perfect impostor. (c)
Q
His mysteriousness was at the root of her adoration. (c)
Addiction can take different guises.
Q
She wants to be a doll in an ogre’s garden. …
Adèle hopes that her children will not be like her. (c)
Q
How wonderful it would be to get paid for her talent of giving men pleasure. (c)
Q
She’s taking charge now, she’s treating them, and after a glass of Saint-Estèphe, in the woodsmoke-scented air, she has the feeling that they love her and are forever in her debt. (c)
Q
Her obsessions devour her. She is helpless to stop them. Because her life requires so many lies, it has to be carefully organized—an exhausting activity that occupies her entire brain, that gnaws at her. (c)
Journalism as well:
Q
She opens a blank document and starts to type. She invents quotes from high-up anonymous sources: “a figure close to the government,” “a well-placed observer who asked to remain nameless.” She comes up with a nice hook, adds a dash of humor to distract any readers who were expecting the article to provide some information. She reads a few other pieces on the same subject and copy-and-pastes lines from each. The whole thing takes her barely an hour. (c)
Q
Adèle tries to act casual. The main thing is not to look as though you feel guilty. (c)
Q
All that matters to her is the freedom the job gives her. Her salary is low but at least she gets to travel. She can disappear, invent secret rendezvous, without having to justify herself. (c)
Q
The men are going to think that she’s up for it, easy, a slut. The women will treat her as a predator; the kinder ones might say that she’s emotionally fragile. They will all be wrong. (c)
Q
She looked down at her belly and then back up at her face. She wondered if she would once again become what she had been before. She was acutely aware of her own metamorphosis. (c)
Q
Never again will the slightest gesture be innocent. This terrifies and enraptures her. (c)
Q
Adèle has spent a long time looking up. She has examined dozens of ceilings, followed the curved lines of moldings, the rocking of lamps. (c)
Q
Eroticism covered everything. It masked the banality and vanity of things. … This quest abolished all rules, all codes. Friendships, ambitions, schedules . . . it made them all impossible. (c)
Q
Grief is a wonderful excuse. (c)
- Disjointedness. -1 star
- Background / insights lacking: the what, the why, the how, the what for? - 1 star
- Seriously? No one ever noticed anything? Ouch. And she never got any illnesses? Not even some mild gonorrhea case? -1 star
- While this is an interesting vignette of a nymphomaniac being her sex addicted self, it's not engaging or giving enough background or even an interconnected plot. We got a male parade, which is a chore to read, which is probably the way it was intended to be. Still… not inspiring or anything. - 1 star
Q
His wife had been a perfect impostor. (c)
Q
His mysteriousness was at the root of her adoration. (c)
Addiction can take different guises.
Q
She wants to be a doll in an ogre’s garden. …
Adèle hopes that her children will not be like her. (c)
Q
How wonderful it would be to get paid for her talent of giving men pleasure. (c)
Q
She’s taking charge now, she’s treating them, and after a glass of Saint-Estèphe, in the woodsmoke-scented air, she has the feeling that they love her and are forever in her debt. (c)
Q
Her obsessions devour her. She is helpless to stop them. Because her life requires so many lies, it has to be carefully organized—an exhausting activity that occupies her entire brain, that gnaws at her. (c)
Journalism as well:
Q
She opens a blank document and starts to type. She invents quotes from high-up anonymous sources: “a figure close to the government,” “a well-placed observer who asked to remain nameless.” She comes up with a nice hook, adds a dash of humor to distract any readers who were expecting the article to provide some information. She reads a few other pieces on the same subject and copy-and-pastes lines from each. The whole thing takes her barely an hour. (c)
Q
Adèle tries to act casual. The main thing is not to look as though you feel guilty. (c)
Q
All that matters to her is the freedom the job gives her. Her salary is low but at least she gets to travel. She can disappear, invent secret rendezvous, without having to justify herself. (c)
Q
The men are going to think that she’s up for it, easy, a slut. The women will treat her as a predator; the kinder ones might say that she’s emotionally fragile. They will all be wrong. (c)
Q
She looked down at her belly and then back up at her face. She wondered if she would once again become what she had been before. She was acutely aware of her own metamorphosis. (c)
Q
Never again will the slightest gesture be innocent. This terrifies and enraptures her. (c)
Q
Adèle has spent a long time looking up. She has examined dozens of ceilings, followed the curved lines of moldings, the rocking of lamps. (c)
Q
Eroticism covered everything. It masked the banality and vanity of things. … This quest abolished all rules, all codes. Friendships, ambitions, schedules . . . it made them all impossible. (c)
Q
Grief is a wonderful excuse. (c)
January 11, 2019
I think there are things I loved about the book, and then there are parts I couldn't care less. Therefore I settled for a 3.
First of all, Slimani's talent for personification is super. Adele was very real to me. I felt sympathy, anger, pity for her at times. She was a very realistic portrayal of a woman, that's not so common to see.
Adele is a sex addict and it affects everything she does in her life. She also a wife and mother, and it definitely shows there’s not one type of person, woman or mother. She and her husband annoyed the hell out of me, but I take it as a result of Slimani's good writing of human phycology and characterisation.
Coming to what I found lacking in this book is an original, interesting plot. I read this plot before. It was nothing original. I kept waiting to see an interesting twist, which didn't come.
Was it good writing? Yes. But, did I enjoy my time? Not so much as I didn't read an interesting line of events.
Therefore, 3 stars.
First of all, Slimani's talent for personification is super. Adele was very real to me. I felt sympathy, anger, pity for her at times. She was a very realistic portrayal of a woman, that's not so common to see.
Adele is a sex addict and it affects everything she does in her life. She also a wife and mother, and it definitely shows there’s not one type of person, woman or mother. She and her husband annoyed the hell out of me, but I take it as a result of Slimani's good writing of human phycology and characterisation.
Coming to what I found lacking in this book is an original, interesting plot. I read this plot before. It was nothing original. I kept waiting to see an interesting twist, which didn't come.
Was it good writing? Yes. But, did I enjoy my time? Not so much as I didn't read an interesting line of events.
Therefore, 3 stars.
January 24, 2019
Privileged psycho she-beast in a shitty marriage sleeps with half of Paris but the sex is weird and boring and then her husband finds out and then the marriage becomes even shittier, but they stay together anyway and so what?
November 25, 2021
Opinião No Jardim do Ogre, de Leïla Slimani
Tradução de Tânia Ganho
Revisão de Rita Almeida Simões
Ser Adèle é viver em sufoco, esmagada, sem identidade, sem pertença. É estar presa e sozinha mesmo quando acompanhada, penetrada.
Este é o livro que vive da sua história. Não tem, na minha opinião, uma escrita extraordinária, nem uma profundidade transformadora. Mas tem uma história fortíssima, claustrofóbica, triste, que nos esmurra e nos faz querer amparar esta mulher que nunca chegou a ser.
A meu ver, quem ler este livro em busca de literatura erótica vai desiludir-se. Este não é um livro sobre sexo, não é um livro sobre desejo. Muito menos é um livro sobre uma mulher forte que sabe o que quer e não teme procurá-lo. Este é, acima de tudo, um livro sobre dor, sobre solidão, sobre uma mulher que não se basta a si mesma, que é metade.
Aqui, a procura do acto sexual serve como tentativa de romper a solidão, a angústia, a inexistência. De encontrar alguém, que não ela, que rasgue a desolação de ser incompleta. Adèle é a prova, a personificação, de que nenhuma pessoa será inteira se for pessoa que vive através de outrem. Será sempre desfeita, desfigurada, anulada.
“Ela reencontra as suas sensações. A alma pesa-lhe menos, o seu espírito esvazia-se”.
Este é um livro que, apenas por antítese, faz a apologia da importância de ser mulher completa, que se baste, sem necessidade de viver através de alguém.
O conflito serve a necessidade de reconstrução, do mundo, de nós, da noção de ser. É isso que aqui encontramos. Uma mulher que procura o conflito, consigo e com o mundo, que quebra todas as regras para se auto-destruir e procurar, esperando ferramentas que lhe cheguem de fora, uma reconstrução, algo que a parta e a volte a unir de outra forma, una. Inconsciente. Está perdida. Desolada. Quer morrer e nascer outra.
Foi um murro no estômago e uma leitura muito triste, esta, ainda que transformadora e marcante. Muito marcante. Quem a lê sente-se acometido, também, por um sentido de urgência. E logo de desolação por não poder juntar as peças desta mulher meia.
Playlist em Spotify com o título do livro. 🎼
Tradução de Tânia Ganho
Revisão de Rita Almeida Simões
Ser Adèle é viver em sufoco, esmagada, sem identidade, sem pertença. É estar presa e sozinha mesmo quando acompanhada, penetrada.
Este é o livro que vive da sua história. Não tem, na minha opinião, uma escrita extraordinária, nem uma profundidade transformadora. Mas tem uma história fortíssima, claustrofóbica, triste, que nos esmurra e nos faz querer amparar esta mulher que nunca chegou a ser.
A meu ver, quem ler este livro em busca de literatura erótica vai desiludir-se. Este não é um livro sobre sexo, não é um livro sobre desejo. Muito menos é um livro sobre uma mulher forte que sabe o que quer e não teme procurá-lo. Este é, acima de tudo, um livro sobre dor, sobre solidão, sobre uma mulher que não se basta a si mesma, que é metade.
Aqui, a procura do acto sexual serve como tentativa de romper a solidão, a angústia, a inexistência. De encontrar alguém, que não ela, que rasgue a desolação de ser incompleta. Adèle é a prova, a personificação, de que nenhuma pessoa será inteira se for pessoa que vive através de outrem. Será sempre desfeita, desfigurada, anulada.
“Ela reencontra as suas sensações. A alma pesa-lhe menos, o seu espírito esvazia-se”.
Este é um livro que, apenas por antítese, faz a apologia da importância de ser mulher completa, que se baste, sem necessidade de viver através de alguém.
O conflito serve a necessidade de reconstrução, do mundo, de nós, da noção de ser. É isso que aqui encontramos. Uma mulher que procura o conflito, consigo e com o mundo, que quebra todas as regras para se auto-destruir e procurar, esperando ferramentas que lhe cheguem de fora, uma reconstrução, algo que a parta e a volte a unir de outra forma, una. Inconsciente. Está perdida. Desolada. Quer morrer e nascer outra.
Foi um murro no estômago e uma leitura muito triste, esta, ainda que transformadora e marcante. Muito marcante. Quem a lê sente-se acometido, também, por um sentido de urgência. E logo de desolação por não poder juntar as peças desta mulher meia.
Playlist em Spotify com o título do livro. 🎼
February 8, 2018
gera knyga, nu bet visiškai ne mano skonio. kažkas tarp - ar gal greičiau PO - kareninos, bovari, nu ir žinoma kunderos, ir visi šitie yra nu totaliai ne mano.
apie moterį, kuri gali pasijusti gyva, esanti, jaučianti tik tada, kai mylisi su absoliučiai atsitiktiniais vyrais, o dar geriau kai biški roughly (yra ir jau tokių beveik smurtinių scenų). primena Buožytės "Kolekcionierę"? nu jo. primena Tereškino "Vasarą"? nu jo. primena 50x mistinių moterų personažių? nu jo.
bet visgi - nežinau, ar tai dėl to, kad autorė moteris (nesinori taip lengvai visko nurašyt ir suskirstyt), ar šiaip gerai pagauta - kažkokiu būdu ta moteris neatrodo visai dissectinama ir paliekama "la feminine mystique" plotmėje. kažkokiu būdu šiek tiek atsiveria ir jos vidujybė. gal čia tas romane 100 proc dominuojantis veiksmažodžių esamasis laikas - kad mes visada esam su Adele, matom jos akimis, net biški pajaučiam jos juslėmis (ugh), kaip kad būna visokiuose įtampos žanruose - siaubiake, pornuškėj - bet ta įtampa yra tiesiog buvimo įtampa, gyvenimo, ieškojimo, kaip būti su savo kūnu ir kas jis yra.
minusas 1 - nu blin, galvojau, kad jau to nebus, bet tai ne, gale turėjo užvaryt - apie santykį su motina, kaip motina Adelės nemylėjo, buvo šalta ir konkurentė, ir dabar mes tipo kaip apsišvietusios self made psichoanalitikės iškart suprantam - jo jo, motina kalta, kad ji TOKIA.
minusas 2 - nu bet kažkaip... kas tas yra per žanras, "bandymas suprasti MOTERĮ"? ypač - moters geismą, moters kūną. ...so last century. ir bet kuriuo atveju - man atrodo, kad šitoj srity niekas, net Haneke, nepralenkia, negali pralenkt Elfriede Jelinek.
apie moterį, kuri gali pasijusti gyva, esanti, jaučianti tik tada, kai mylisi su absoliučiai atsitiktiniais vyrais, o dar geriau kai biški roughly (yra ir jau tokių beveik smurtinių scenų). primena Buožytės "Kolekcionierę"? nu jo. primena Tereškino "Vasarą"? nu jo. primena 50x mistinių moterų personažių? nu jo.
bet visgi - nežinau, ar tai dėl to, kad autorė moteris (nesinori taip lengvai visko nurašyt ir suskirstyt), ar šiaip gerai pagauta - kažkokiu būdu ta moteris neatrodo visai dissectinama ir paliekama "la feminine mystique" plotmėje. kažkokiu būdu šiek tiek atsiveria ir jos vidujybė. gal čia tas romane 100 proc dominuojantis veiksmažodžių esamasis laikas - kad mes visada esam su Adele, matom jos akimis, net biški pajaučiam jos juslėmis (ugh), kaip kad būna visokiuose įtampos žanruose - siaubiake, pornuškėj - bet ta įtampa yra tiesiog buvimo įtampa, gyvenimo, ieškojimo, kaip būti su savo kūnu ir kas jis yra.
minusas 1 - nu blin, galvojau, kad jau to nebus, bet tai ne, gale turėjo užvaryt - apie santykį su motina, kaip motina Adelės nemylėjo, buvo šalta ir konkurentė, ir dabar mes tipo kaip apsišvietusios self made psichoanalitikės iškart suprantam - jo jo, motina kalta, kad ji TOKIA.
minusas 2 - nu bet kažkaip... kas tas yra per žanras, "bandymas suprasti MOTERĮ"? ypač - moters geismą, moters kūną. ...so last century. ir bet kuriuo atveju - man atrodo, kad šitoj srity niekas, net Haneke, nepralenkia, negali pralenkt Elfriede Jelinek.
June 12, 2023
Смущаваща, отблъскваща, брутална история, написана по невероятен начин с притегателна сила, която ме всмука в адски водовъртеж и не ме отпусна от хватката си, докато не я завърших. За ден, на един дъх.
Адел не е като другите съпруги, майки, жени. Има мрачна тайна. Търси смисъл, чрез манията си да притежава тела. Ежедневно, на всевъзможни места, трескаво, постоянно. Опитва да се спаси, да се измъкне от блатото, но е невъзможно, защото само така чувства, осъществява, само така живее, само така намира сила да преживее всеки следващ ден.
Лейла Слимани пише божествено! От една ужасна история е направила психологически шедьовър! Изгражда невероятно плътен, брилянтен образ на една болна жена.
“Да изпитваш желание, означава да отсъстваш.”
“Адел си роди дете по същата причина, поради която се омъжи. За да де впише в света и да се защити от всякакво различие спрямо другите. Като стана съпруга и майка, тя се окичи с ореол на порядъчност, който никой не може да и отнеме. Изгради си заслон срещу тревожните вечери и уютно убежище за дните на разврат.”
“Мислеше си, че раждането на дете ще я излекува. Беше се убедила, че майчинството е единственият изход от чувството за дискомфорт, единствено решение, за да прекрати бягството от реалността. Беше се отдала на това бягство, както пациент най-накрая приема необходимо лечение. Тя си наложи това дете или по-скоро това дете и се наложи, без тя да се противопостави, защото неистово се надяваше, че ще и се отрази добре.”
Четете на своя лична отговорност!
Адел не е като другите съпруги, майки, жени. Има мрачна тайна. Търси смисъл, чрез манията си да притежава тела. Ежедневно, на всевъзможни места, трескаво, постоянно. Опитва да се спаси, да се измъкне от блатото, но е невъзможно, защото само така чувства, осъществява, само така живее, само така намира сила да преживее всеки следващ ден.
Лейла Слимани пише божествено! От една ужасна история е направила психологически шедьовър! Изгражда невероятно плътен, брилянтен образ на една болна жена.
“Да изпитваш желание, означава да отсъстваш.”
“Адел си роди дете по същата причина, поради която се омъжи. За да де впише в света и да се защити от всякакво различие спрямо другите. Като стана съпруга и майка, тя се окичи с ореол на порядъчност, който никой не може да и отнеме. Изгради си заслон срещу тревожните вечери и уютно убежище за дните на разврат.”
“Мислеше си, че раждането на дете ще я излекува. Беше се убедила, че майчинството е единственият изход от чувството за дискомфорт, единствено решение, за да прекрати бягството от реалността. Беше се отдала на това бягство, както пациент най-накрая приема необходимо лечение. Тя си наложи това дете или по-скоро това дете и се наложи, без тя да се противопостави, защото неистово се надяваше, че ще и се отрази добре.”
Четете на своя лична отговорност!
September 23, 2021
“People who are never satisfied destroy everything around them.”
April 1, 2024
E termino o #lermulheres em março com este livro de Leila Slimani. É o terceiro livro que leio da autora e conseguiu, mais uma vez, surpreender-me.
Adèle é bonita, ainda jovem, jornalista, casada com um médico bem sucedido e tem um filho pequeno. Aparentemente, tem uma vida invejável e tudo para ser uma mulher realizada e feliz. Mas Adèle vive atormentada pelo desejo, acumula aventuras sexuais, vive uma vida dupla.
Esta busca incessante pelo prazer, pela satisfação do desejo sexual, esconde uma solidão imensa, uma necessidade de validação através do outro e, ao mesmo tempo, um total desprezo por si e pela sua identidade.
Acho que esta não é uma história de amor, ao contrário do que a sinopse indica. É uma história triste, que incomoda, que é um murro no estômago. A espiral em que Adèle se encontra parece não ter fim, mesmo quando é forçada a abrandar.
Um livro que se lê com urgência. A escrita e a narrativa impelem a uma leitura que não se quer interromper.
Adèle é bonita, ainda jovem, jornalista, casada com um médico bem sucedido e tem um filho pequeno. Aparentemente, tem uma vida invejável e tudo para ser uma mulher realizada e feliz. Mas Adèle vive atormentada pelo desejo, acumula aventuras sexuais, vive uma vida dupla.
Esta busca incessante pelo prazer, pela satisfação do desejo sexual, esconde uma solidão imensa, uma necessidade de validação através do outro e, ao mesmo tempo, um total desprezo por si e pela sua identidade.
Acho que esta não é uma história de amor, ao contrário do que a sinopse indica. É uma história triste, que incomoda, que é um murro no estômago. A espiral em que Adèle se encontra parece não ter fim, mesmo quando é forçada a abrandar.
Um livro que se lê com urgência. A escrita e a narrativa impelem a uma leitura que não se quer interromper.
July 13, 2019
Adèle hat alles: den vorzeigbaren Arzt-Ehemann und niedlich-Sohn, den Job bei der Tageszeitung, die schicke Wohnung in Paris. Findest du langweilig? Sie auch. So sehr sie die Menschen hasst und ihr eigenes Leben auch, so kalt und ziellos irrt sie von Sex zu Sex und fühlt dabei doch nichts. Immer mehr, immer skurriler, immer ... ja, was denn? Wohin treibt sie? Und wann ist da mal Schluss?
Slimani schreibt hier unglaublich atmosphärisch mit der je ne sais quoi Hand einer Französin und reiht sich damit zu meinen Lieblingen wie De Vigan oder Despentes. Ich konnte es nicht aus der Hand legen, verschlang Wort für Wort, war wie berauscht. Während viele Rezensionen von der endlich hemmungslos dargebotenen weiblichen Sexualität und befreitem Feminismus sprechen, sehe ich hier einen persönlichen Leidensweg, der gar nicht dieser Politisierung bedarf. Adèles Kampf, ihr Konflikt, ihr vorprogrammiertes Versagen vereinnahmen auch so. Slimani gewährt einen Einblick in Abgründe. Schonungslos und wundervoll.
Slimani schreibt hier unglaublich atmosphärisch mit der je ne sais quoi Hand einer Französin und reiht sich damit zu meinen Lieblingen wie De Vigan oder Despentes. Ich konnte es nicht aus der Hand legen, verschlang Wort für Wort, war wie berauscht. Während viele Rezensionen von der endlich hemmungslos dargebotenen weiblichen Sexualität und befreitem Feminismus sprechen, sehe ich hier einen persönlichen Leidensweg, der gar nicht dieser Politisierung bedarf. Adèles Kampf, ihr Konflikt, ihr vorprogrammiertes Versagen vereinnahmen auch so. Slimani gewährt einen Einblick in Abgründe. Schonungslos und wundervoll.
May 17, 2019
English: Adèle; French Original: Dans le jardin de l'ogre
The protagonist of this book is a sex addict, but this should not mislead you into thinking that this is a novel about sex or that it is in any way erotic: As with every other addiction, it's less about the kind of behavior or substance the addict clings to, but about a person compulsively repeating destructive patterns, desperately trying to fight an emptiness. Although Adèle grew up experiencing her parents' marriage as ordinary and suffocating, she is now, at 37, married to an ordinary doctor (hello, Madame Bovary) and has a little son, because, well, that's what people do. Her main reason for working as a journalist is that her schedule allows for a lot of excuses and cover-ups for her numerous extramarital sexual exploits. Since she was a teenager, Adèle has perceived sex as a means to boost her self-worth, and now - being unhappy with her life and her decisions, but feeling unable to make changes - she obsessively seeks diversion in sex, and we are talking about the kind where she endlessly stares at ceilings and at walls, detecting cracks and signs of water damage while contemplating what she is expected to do, so it's not like she is enjoying herself. Adèle wants to be free, but freedom and sex against societal conventions are not the same thing - our protagonist is in fact miserable.
Slimani choses not to give a neat and coherent explanation for Adèle's decisions, she is not excused or even portrayed as particularly likeable. Rather, we get clues, little bits and pieces that hint at the sources of her addiction, her inability to gain real agency over her life, and her efforts to preserve her inner freedom by turning herself into an object for men. The real provocation of the text is that Adèle is suffering from inertia and ennui, i.e., she is egotistical, but there is no denying that she is truly suffering - we as the readers are left to judge her and her decisions.
What bothered me a little was the language though: It's not only that it is not lyrical, there even is a mechanical, über-obvious and sometimes bland quality to it, which you can certainly see as fitting if you consider the topic of the book, but it does not make for a captivating sound. There are also some issues with the German translation I listened to (e.g. I assume it's an attempt to translate "gênant", but "genierlich"? Mmmhhh...).
So this short novel is slightly flawed, but hey, this was Slimani's debut, and she was certainly not playing it safe, and I appreciate that. Plus there's another dimension to it: In her native Morocco, adultery is a criminal offense, and Slimani, who lives in France, did have the book published there, knowing full well that it would cause a scandal. For her, it was important to adress the topic nevertheless, and I applaud her for it.
The protagonist of this book is a sex addict, but this should not mislead you into thinking that this is a novel about sex or that it is in any way erotic: As with every other addiction, it's less about the kind of behavior or substance the addict clings to, but about a person compulsively repeating destructive patterns, desperately trying to fight an emptiness. Although Adèle grew up experiencing her parents' marriage as ordinary and suffocating, she is now, at 37, married to an ordinary doctor (hello, Madame Bovary) and has a little son, because, well, that's what people do. Her main reason for working as a journalist is that her schedule allows for a lot of excuses and cover-ups for her numerous extramarital sexual exploits. Since she was a teenager, Adèle has perceived sex as a means to boost her self-worth, and now - being unhappy with her life and her decisions, but feeling unable to make changes - she obsessively seeks diversion in sex, and we are talking about the kind where she endlessly stares at ceilings and at walls, detecting cracks and signs of water damage while contemplating what she is expected to do, so it's not like she is enjoying herself. Adèle wants to be free, but freedom and sex against societal conventions are not the same thing - our protagonist is in fact miserable.
Slimani choses not to give a neat and coherent explanation for Adèle's decisions, she is not excused or even portrayed as particularly likeable. Rather, we get clues, little bits and pieces that hint at the sources of her addiction, her inability to gain real agency over her life, and her efforts to preserve her inner freedom by turning herself into an object for men. The real provocation of the text is that Adèle is suffering from inertia and ennui, i.e., she is egotistical, but there is no denying that she is truly suffering - we as the readers are left to judge her and her decisions.
What bothered me a little was the language though: It's not only that it is not lyrical, there even is a mechanical, über-obvious and sometimes bland quality to it, which you can certainly see as fitting if you consider the topic of the book, but it does not make for a captivating sound. There are also some issues with the German translation I listened to (e.g. I assume it's an attempt to translate "gênant", but "genierlich"? Mmmhhh...).
So this short novel is slightly flawed, but hey, this was Slimani's debut, and she was certainly not playing it safe, and I appreciate that. Plus there's another dimension to it: In her native Morocco, adultery is a criminal offense, and Slimani, who lives in France, did have the book published there, knowing full well that it would cause a scandal. For her, it was important to adress the topic nevertheless, and I applaud her for it.
January 29, 2019
She wants to be a doll in an ogre's garden
An enigmatic book that seems to be re-writing Madame Bovary with an eye on the paradoxes and conundrums of a modern woman. Where Emma Bovary wants life to be as sweepingly lush as the romance novels she's devoured, Adele desires something far more complex, something that she - and we - are hard pressed to identify and delineate.
Bored of her bourgeois lifestyle, burdened by a doctor husband she doesn't love, a son who demands things of her she finds difficult to give with any degree of constancy, Adele takes refuge in sex: the dirtier, more anonymous and increasingly violent, the better. She's not searching for love or romance, she wants to be looked at to affirm she exists, and her affirmations of life come from the 'vile and the obscene, the heart of bourgeois perversion and human wretchedness'.
Slimani doesn't descend to pop psychological 'reasons' for Adele being the way she is - she just is. She wants to be debased rather than empowered (except she's the one who picks up and drops men), to be the object rather than the wielder of society's gendered gaze. She uses a form of eroticism to tear apart society's strictures: 'eroticism covered everything. It masked the banality and vanity of things... this quest abolished all rule, all codes. Friendships, ambitions, schedules... it made them all impossible.'
A quick read but an exhilarating one written in pared back prose: transgressive, subversive, likely to divide readers, and yes, enigmatic and provocative rather than transparent.
Many thanks to Faber & Faber for an ARC via NetGalley
February 27, 2019
When Adèle was first published in France in 2014 it boasted the incredibly strange title of Dans le jardin de l’ogre or, In The Ogre’s Garden. Now freshly translated and ready for Anglophone audiences, Leïla Slimani’s follow-up to Lullaby (which was actually published after this novel) follows Adèle, a wife and mother with an insatiable addiction to sex. The novel has been called ‘an erotic and daring story’ and it genuinely is both of those things. However, when you finish Adèle you end up feeling how a story about a sex addict could end up being so vanilla?
Read my full review on my blog here: https://liquidays.wordpress.com/2019/...
Read my full review on my blog here: https://liquidays.wordpress.com/2019/...
December 10, 2018
I liked this better than Slimani's Lullaby, I think, but I had the same problem with both books: a feeling of emptiness at the core. Adèle reminded me of Jill Alexander Essbaum's
Hausfrau
even more than Lullaby did, in both its cold, utilitarian prose and its depiction of an unhappily married woman who exists in a state of passive numbness. It might also fit into a very specific category alongside Delphine de Vigan's
Loyalties
(short French novels, due to be published in translation in 2019, that deal with unhappy/dysfunctional families living in Paris. The books are so similar in tone that I'd have no trouble believing they were written by the same person).
I wonder how many book reviews – my own, and other people's – have begun with the words '[name of main character] seems to have it all'. So: Adèle Robinson seems to have it all. A journalist in Paris, married to a surgeon, Adèle is mother to an angelic 3-year-old boy and lives in a beautiful apartment. Yet, privately, she is engaged in a spiral of extreme and self-destructive behaviour. Adèle is addicted to sex: she seeks out both affairs and casual encounters, often seducing the most unsuitable and dangerous people (a colleague of her husband's; her best friend's on-off boyfriend) as if that adds to the thrill. She doesn't have to be attracted to the men she fucks – she wants, above all, to feel wanted.
It's a depressing story. In Adèle, everything is a trap: marriage is dull and oppressive, casual flings are seedy and unfulfilling, being single is such a horrifying prospect that constant misery is preferable, and one's worth as a woman can only be reinforced through male (sexual) approval. The book is divided into two halves – before and after a decisive, arguably inevitable, moment changes the course of events – and it's hard to decide which version of Adèle's life is worse.
As with Louise in Lullaby, I struggled to get under the protagonist's skin. I understood her addiction well enough, but found Adèle as a person so blank I could neither sympathise with nor despise her. While (sometimes vague) answers are given to the questions Adèle's narrative raises – why doesn't she leave Richard, why did she get married and have a child in the first place, etc. – her personality doesn't ever quite cohere. We are given glimpses of her background/family and yet that story, which seems much more interesting than the central plot, is never properly dragged into the light.
Slimani is an interesting writer but – having felt so similarly about her two novels so far – I just don't think her style is for me. Readers who loved Lullaby will, I'm sure, get more out of Adèle than I did. For me, Hausfrau did it much better. (A week after finishing Adèle, I had to reread parts of it to jog my memory, whereas I still remember Essbaum's Anna with relative sharpness three years after reading the book.)
The one thing I did find really intriguing, though, was the very end, the last sentence in particular. It raises the possibility that the narration – which, until this point, reads as third person – has been someone else's voice all along. And that, in turn, raises questions about how truthful this account really is. See what you think.
I received an advance review copy of Adèle from the publisher through NetGalley.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
I wonder how many book reviews – my own, and other people's – have begun with the words '[name of main character] seems to have it all'. So: Adèle Robinson seems to have it all. A journalist in Paris, married to a surgeon, Adèle is mother to an angelic 3-year-old boy and lives in a beautiful apartment. Yet, privately, she is engaged in a spiral of extreme and self-destructive behaviour. Adèle is addicted to sex: she seeks out both affairs and casual encounters, often seducing the most unsuitable and dangerous people (a colleague of her husband's; her best friend's on-off boyfriend) as if that adds to the thrill. She doesn't have to be attracted to the men she fucks – she wants, above all, to feel wanted.
It's a depressing story. In Adèle, everything is a trap: marriage is dull and oppressive, casual flings are seedy and unfulfilling, being single is such a horrifying prospect that constant misery is preferable, and one's worth as a woman can only be reinforced through male (sexual) approval. The book is divided into two halves – before and after a decisive, arguably inevitable, moment changes the course of events – and it's hard to decide which version of Adèle's life is worse.
As with Louise in Lullaby, I struggled to get under the protagonist's skin. I understood her addiction well enough, but found Adèle as a person so blank I could neither sympathise with nor despise her. While (sometimes vague) answers are given to the questions Adèle's narrative raises – why doesn't she leave Richard, why did she get married and have a child in the first place, etc. – her personality doesn't ever quite cohere. We are given glimpses of her background/family and yet that story, which seems much more interesting than the central plot, is never properly dragged into the light.
Slimani is an interesting writer but – having felt so similarly about her two novels so far – I just don't think her style is for me. Readers who loved Lullaby will, I'm sure, get more out of Adèle than I did. For me, Hausfrau did it much better. (A week after finishing Adèle, I had to reread parts of it to jog my memory, whereas I still remember Essbaum's Anna with relative sharpness three years after reading the book.)
The one thing I did find really intriguing, though, was the very end, the last sentence in particular. It raises the possibility that the narration – which, until this point, reads as third person – has been someone else's voice all along. And that, in turn, raises questions about how truthful this account really is. See what you think.
I received an advance review copy of Adèle from the publisher through NetGalley.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
February 28, 2023
4.6⭐️
Há muito tempo que não lia um romance de um só fôlego! Foi o meu primeiro contacto com a escrita de Leïla Slimani e que romancista! Sabe escrever como ninguém sobre o corpo da mulher e neste livro agarra-nos numa vertiginosa viagem à vida dupla de Adèle, da sua adição sexual e da sua incompletude e busca pelo absoluto e pelo que para si poderá ser o amor.
Há muito tempo que não lia um romance de um só fôlego! Foi o meu primeiro contacto com a escrita de Leïla Slimani e que romancista! Sabe escrever como ninguém sobre o corpo da mulher e neste livro agarra-nos numa vertiginosa viagem à vida dupla de Adèle, da sua adição sexual e da sua incompletude e busca pelo absoluto e pelo que para si poderá ser o amor.
February 23, 2019
Good thing it’s a short book. It started off interesting and then I got bored.
October 24, 2021
Um livro cru, poderoso, visceral e muitas vezes incomodo e doloroso de ler.. o tema é pesado, mas está muito bem retratada a dificuldade de algumas pessoas se entregarem a um conformismo da vida e terem uma necessidade constante de procurar novos elementos de pulsão e desejo constante … não é um livro para todas as pessoas e não é uma leitura fácil… contudo, Leila fez um excelente trabalho nesta sua pequena obra.. gostei muito
November 11, 2019
Adele’s public life seems perfect: a journalist married to a doctor, mother to their three year old son, living the cosmopolitan life in Paris. Her private life though is bleak: a secret sex addict, she joylessly sleeps with any and almost every man she comes across, each degrading coupling becoming more desperate and unfulfilling. With no end in sight from her increasingly out-of-control behaviour, how long can she keep her private life from being exposed?
Like her previous novel Lullaby, Leila Slimani’s Adele has an intriguing premise that she unfortunately totally fails to deliver on. I kept reading this relatively short novel wondering where it was going - and the answer was nowhere! Not just plot-wise either (there isn’t one) but in terms of a point. Adele sleeps around, she’s depressed the whole time, and that’s it.
Ok, she’s an addict so that explains the compulsions and lack of satisfaction but it would have been appreciated if we had had a glimpse into what caused her to act this way. Slimani offers up scant details – she didn’t have the best childhood, though it wasn’t so bad and plenty of people don’t become sex addicts as a result of a shitty parent. So there’s no insight into how someone becomes this way and it doesn’t go anywhere or say anything which is just lazy, unimaginative writing.
I guess you could say it’s sort of making the point that women are objectified but that’s hardly a new idea and very banal. Slimani’s distant storytelling means she never judges Adele’s behaviour (girl power…?) but her weak impressionistic style makes for an unmemorable narrative, despite the salacious subject matter.
It’s well-written – it’s like a slightly more literary version of the porn-y novels that are so popular with many women – and it is morbidly interesting, if you see her behaviour as a reaction to the myriad existential issues we all deal with daily, albeit more extreme. Otherwise, Adele is an unremarkable and forgettable character portrait of a troubled person behaving incongruously for reasons nobody knows – as meaningless as all the sex Adele has!
Like her previous novel Lullaby, Leila Slimani’s Adele has an intriguing premise that she unfortunately totally fails to deliver on. I kept reading this relatively short novel wondering where it was going - and the answer was nowhere! Not just plot-wise either (there isn’t one) but in terms of a point. Adele sleeps around, she’s depressed the whole time, and that’s it.
Ok, she’s an addict so that explains the compulsions and lack of satisfaction but it would have been appreciated if we had had a glimpse into what caused her to act this way. Slimani offers up scant details – she didn’t have the best childhood, though it wasn’t so bad and plenty of people don’t become sex addicts as a result of a shitty parent. So there’s no insight into how someone becomes this way and it doesn’t go anywhere or say anything which is just lazy, unimaginative writing.
I guess you could say it’s sort of making the point that women are objectified but that’s hardly a new idea and very banal. Slimani’s distant storytelling means she never judges Adele’s behaviour (girl power…?) but her weak impressionistic style makes for an unmemorable narrative, despite the salacious subject matter.
It’s well-written – it’s like a slightly more literary version of the porn-y novels that are so popular with many women – and it is morbidly interesting, if you see her behaviour as a reaction to the myriad existential issues we all deal with daily, albeit more extreme. Otherwise, Adele is an unremarkable and forgettable character portrait of a troubled person behaving incongruously for reasons nobody knows – as meaningless as all the sex Adele has!
December 20, 2014
Dans le jardin de l'ogre est le premier roman de Leïla Slimani, une journaliste franco-marocaine. Dans cette fiction, elle fait le portrait d'une journaliste parisienne , Adèle, qui trompe son mari le plus souvent possible dès que l'occasion se présente. Les circonstances sont favorables car il est fort occupé par son emploi de médecin est n'est pas du genre soupçonneux ou jaloux. Elle, de son côté, effectue son métier d'une manière bien peu scrupuleuse, se contentant de vaguement compiler des informations existantes tout en y mêlant des éléments inventées et fantaisistes. Cela lui laisse tout le loisir pour le divertissement de cette inquiétude qui la taraude inlassablement. Le regard porté sur le microcosme dans lequel le couple évolue est sans concessions.
Toutes ces aventures sont placées sous le signe de la satire amère, de la frustration angoissante, de la jouissance triste, de la froide indifférence, du mépris, de l'incompréhension, de la tricherie, de l'ennui, de la résignation, et de comment malgré tout on survit à tout ça, en cherchant quelque chose qui nous fasse vibrer et empêche notre cœur de geler, dans une vie et une ville glaciale. L'érotisme qu'on y trouve n'a vraiment rien d'affriolant. Il y a bien sûr cette part d'horreur et de transgression qui plait dans les fictions, comme Aristote l'avait montré dans sa Poétique. Surtout, j'ai été touché par la peinture juste et crédible des caractères. Après, il y a aussi le fait que je ne lis pas beaucoup de romans contemporains, donc j'ai été aussi intrigué par la nouveauté. Mais je ne pourrais sans doute pas supporter de ne lire que ça. Le style est bon, sans affectation. Pas mal du tout.
April 3, 2023
leila slimani masters the art of creating complex, flawed and quite frankly profoundly unlikeable female characters and for that i can only applaud
December 22, 2019
The sad allure of self destruction
Adèle is a book about addiction to sex and Leïla Slimani shows what this means for the eponymous main character in an almost claustrophobic way. Somewhere at the end Adele thinks to herself that eroticism can cloud everything, but her world felt bleak and depressing nonetheless.
Our main character is shown having had a harsh childhood, with a father who complains about lost opportunities and rather not having existed at all, and a mother who thinks her daughter is not good enough for her son in law. But she is not overly analysed or explained by childhood trauma.
Actually, despite the glimpses you get as a reader of her inner life, she still feels quite unsympathetic and cold, and blasé. Even her ever more desperately seeking to feel anything at all, and the larger and larger betraying of everyone who cares for her required to achieve this, including her child and hospitalised husband, didn't make me feel much for her.
Within Adele, the want to escape from everyday life is coupled with the need to be desired (which is definitely not equal to being respected or loved). Also marriage is shown partly as a trap, because what can a woman, who doesn't even have her drivers license and who is mentally unstable, really do besides keeping up her appearances?
Her husband, the doctor loves her, but also wants to control her financially and in terms of movement space after the first murderous feelings abide when Adeles secret is out. Being married, and being a mother, acts like a shield against judgement from the outside world, and this is seemingly more important than happiness for both Adele and her husband.
The story is sad and compulsive, realistic in the description of an addiction, rather than glamorous and exciting. This made this book quite a hard read, despite the short length. Well written in sparse and plain prose, I felt the reading experience lacked warmth and humanity to really made me care in the end.
Three stars.
Adèle is a book about addiction to sex and Leïla Slimani shows what this means for the eponymous main character in an almost claustrophobic way. Somewhere at the end Adele thinks to herself that eroticism can cloud everything, but her world felt bleak and depressing nonetheless.
Our main character is shown having had a harsh childhood, with a father who complains about lost opportunities and rather not having existed at all, and a mother who thinks her daughter is not good enough for her son in law. But she is not overly analysed or explained by childhood trauma.
Actually, despite the glimpses you get as a reader of her inner life, she still feels quite unsympathetic and cold, and blasé. Even her ever more desperately seeking to feel anything at all, and the larger and larger betraying of everyone who cares for her required to achieve this, including her child and hospitalised husband, didn't make me feel much for her.
Within Adele, the want to escape from everyday life is coupled with the need to be desired (which is definitely not equal to being respected or loved). Also marriage is shown partly as a trap, because what can a woman, who doesn't even have her drivers license and who is mentally unstable, really do besides keeping up her appearances?
Her husband, the doctor loves her, but also wants to control her financially and in terms of movement space after the first murderous feelings abide when Adeles secret is out. Being married, and being a mother, acts like a shield against judgement from the outside world, and this is seemingly more important than happiness for both Adele and her husband.
The story is sad and compulsive, realistic in the description of an addiction, rather than glamorous and exciting. This made this book quite a hard read, despite the short length. Well written in sparse and plain prose, I felt the reading experience lacked warmth and humanity to really made me care in the end.
Three stars.
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