Doctor exacts revenge on hellzapoppin Parisian wife

THE French-Moroccan novelist Leila Slimani likes to unearth the danger in the domestic: her headlinegrabbing second novel Lullaby, published in 2016, wasn’t only about a nanny who murders two small children but, more subtly, about maternal ambivalence in a French middle-class family.

This, her superior first novel, centres on Adele, a Parisian wife, mother and half-arsed journalist who for years has sought oblivion and exhilaration in violent, vodka-fuelled one-night stands.

Her kind, trusting husband, a doctor, cares for her materially, but when he discovers what’s been going on he exacts revenge in a way that is both eminently reasonable and ruthless. Adele is a modern-day Hedda Gabler, bucking furiously against the constraints of her life and, Slimani hints, a damaged childhood, yet lacking the imaginative capacity to find a way out that isn’t wholly destructive. It’s to the credit of this ferociously resonant novel that you simultaneously condemn Adele a bit for this and weep for her, too. |