BOOK REVIEW: Adèle by Leïla Slimani (transalated by Sam Taylor) ★★☆☆☆

Adèle appears to have a 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 by her job and her marriage--and consumed by an insatiable need to have sex. Driven less by pleasure than compulsion, she 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 daring, Adèle is a captivating exploration of addiction, sexuality, and one woman's quest to feel alive.
OK. Straight talk – I did not like this book and you’re probably wondering why the heck did I continue reading it. Was it because of the positive reviews? Maybe, BUT I wanted to read something out of my comfort zone. And I slightly regret my decision.

Originally titled Dans le jardin de l'ogre (In the Ogre’s Garden) we follow Adèle Robinson, a walking contradiction, with a seemingly perfect life. Deep down she has a serious sex addiction, exhibiting traits of the mental disorder, nymphomania. This contemporary French novel, translated into English by Sam Taylor, shows Adèle’s double life, keeping up appearances and her lack of remorse or motherly affection towards her son.

There’s a difference between have a sex addiction and having a healthy sex drive. You’d think sex addiction is about the amount of sex. It’s way more than that. It involves spending days excessively imagining, engaging, and planning for sexual activities, exhibiting uncontrollable urges, which leads to obsession and disruption of daily life.

But why? Much like an alcoholic who turns to alcohol to ease emotional pain, some use it as a coping mechanism to avoid facing unpleasant truths. And like an alcoholic, they lose control, even when their life is falling apart, they turn to the one thing they can rely on. They can lead to other complications like declining health, isolation, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety and loss of interest in activities that used to be enjoyable. Some even resort to maintaining a double life, giving them a thrill or for hiding their shame.

She wants to be a doll in an ogre’s garden.

I promised myself that I would read uplifting books after the drivel I read in 2019. So, why on earth did Adèle pick it up. Although it’s a pretty hyped up book, I saw this title for readers ‘who also enjoyed’ My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Hmmm, Goodreads need to get their sh*t together. In no way does the MSTSK and Adèle have any correlation. I felt cheated already for picking up this book.

Probably the only, ONLY thing I liked about Adèle is how Slimani researched and showed signs of the titular character’s descent into her mental disorder. I’m sure there are far better books about female nymphomaniacs, but seeing that I don’t usually read erotic or sexual books, I can only say what I know. Slimani could have chosen to show this book with from different viewpoint and tense, but I see why she chose to write in the third person, present tense. I felt very distanced and detached from Adèle which I think was probably the point the author was making.

Each season, each birthday, each event in his life, corresponds a lover with a fuzzy face. in his amnesia floats the reassuring feeling of having existed a thousand times through the desire of others.

But while I can respect the author’s tense choices, I just COULD NOT deal with this book. It’s a miracle how I got through it. Slimani proved that I could loath and become addicted to Adèle. She has no redreaming quality (which makes her more addictive) no motherly affection and the ending was so unsatisfactory. I thought Richard would be her saving grace, but I ended up hating him equally. My heart went out to Lucien who was just tossed between parents. I don't know why children are added to the plot, because they often end up becoming the victims of the adult’s terrible behaviour, which in all honesty, is horrifying to read.

And that’s just the tips of the iceberg.

I thought I knew what the point of this book was, but after reading half of it, I still don’t get the point of the book and that’s due to its ambiguous ending. I want to read a book that stays with me, that inspires or opens my eyes. Slimani did her research about the mental disorder, but the plot felt disjointed, lacked insight and repeated itself to the point of boredom. It's unbelievable that Adèle didn’t catch an STD.

As mentioned, I hated Adèle, but then I started to hate Richard. But first Adèle. The woman has it all, even wonderful in-laws. She’s a serial cheater who f*cks about half of the male population in Paris, gives zero f*cks about her family and her work (there’s so much more I want to add but I want this to be a spoiler-free review). She walks around with an air of superiority that made me want to b*tch slap her. She has sex because ‘she wants to feel something’. She spends her time assessing who she can see herself having sex within any location to being annoyed by her son's existence. Adèle had a little plot and was just a chronology of emotionless sexual partners. I wanted to know why Adèle does what she does, but it missed the mark.

Richard was perceived as the victim of his wife horrendous cheating, and an all-round lovable guy, but that all changes. I saw the crack in his personality when he rather his wife be at home bearing him another child than working. When he finds out about the cheating, he wants to divorce her, but then he doesn’t and instead wants to cure/torture her in a condescending manner. Let's just hate one character at a time, OK.

People who are never satisfied destroy everything around them.

I wanted to like this book, but I was left feeling sad, but not as miserable as Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (that was an utter dismal read). Maybe someone else would respect the complexities of what the book had to offer. Kudos for Slimani showing a sex addict’s symptoms but losing star ratings on plot, repetition and lack of reader engagement

Rating: 2/5
Publishers: Faber & Faber
Publication date: January 15th 2019 (first published August 28th 2014)
Genre: Contemporary/ French translated