3.0
Adèle
ByPublisher Description
"Fascinating . . . Adèle has glanced at the covenant of modern womanhood--the idea that you can have it all or should at least die trying--and detonated it." --The New York Times Book Review
"[A] fierce, uncanny thunderbolt of a book." --Entertainment Weekly
From the bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny--one of the 10 Best Books of the Year of The New York Times Book Review--her prizewinning novel about a sex-addicted woman in Paris, for fans of the movie Babygirl
She wants only one thing: to be wanted.
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.
"[A] fierce, uncanny thunderbolt of a book." --Entertainment Weekly
From the bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny--one of the 10 Best Books of the Year of The New York Times Book Review--her prizewinning novel about a sex-addicted woman in Paris, for fans of the movie Babygirl
She wants only one thing: to be wanted.
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.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesAdèle Reviews
3.0
“honestly just disappointed Adèle and Lauren didn’t get their freak on”
“From the pov of a female sex addict. Seems like an awful affliction. There is a lot of sex in the book but it is sleazy and not nice to read. I did not enjoy this book or sympathize with or like any of the characters.”
“I cannot begin to explain how vehemently digusted I feel towards Adele and her husband, Richard. Reading and listening to Leila Slimani’s interview on the book, it was clear she created these characters for the full purpose of being “monsters.” If I am solely judging the book based on the “monstrosity” of these characters, then I would defeinitely give this a 5 star rating.
I don’t believe I have ever come to despise a book as much as this one. Leila Slimani has truly brought out emotions, I’ve never thought capable over fictional characters.
To clarify, I have no quarrels with Adele clearly being a nymphomaniac. My frustration and disgust is centered on her lack of aspiration for herself, her career, nor her family. to her everything has just been out of convenience, including her friendship with her best friend. Some may assume her addiction to sex would at least bring her joy and excitement, however, that is far from the truth. She has not had one enjoyable experience in the book, and as a matter of fact, Adele clarifies she does not enjoy the actual act, but rather the teasing right before she engages in intercourse. There is nothing enjoyable about her life; yet she wants to remain there. It seems, at times, she just wants to be used and objectified, and unfortunately, not in a sexually arousing way - as again, I repeat, she does not even enjoy her sexcapades. Her life and character is so sad. She has nothing going on for her life, and she just accepts it. She does not care to better her life in any way. She just wants to be there, and quite frankly, it is sad. I wonder, however, if she suffers from other disorders, such as depression. Moreover, I surmise she may have an unhealthy relationship with food as 75% of the book, she refuses to eat, and when she does it is not a lot.
Richard, on the other hand, is not any better. He may be described as the perfect husband, but what kind of perfect husband dislikes to have sex with his own wife? What kind of perfect husband assumes his wife does not have sexual desires because he does not have them? What kind of attentive husband does not notice the lack if life in his wife? What kind of perfect husband does not do enough to bring his wife nourishment? What kind of perfect husband pushes a kid onto his wife? Once Richard learned about the affair, he controlled every aspect of Adele : when to eat, what to wear, when to go out, who to go out with, when to shower, when to sleep etc. During this time, we notice a change in Adele whose dark eyes began to clear up, whose bruises (she is also described as a masochist) are fading away, whose nails begin to grow stronger, and whose body is finally gaining healthy weight. Arguably, this is the only time I see Adele have some sort of peace. She no longer has the burden to “think for herself.” However, at the end of the book, we see that this control has no effect on Adele’s disorder once she has the “liberty” to go to her mother’s home unsupervised. And yet, Richard is so obsessed with a picture perfect family, that we find him attempting to rationalize Adele’s infidelity.
This book’s lack of character development, peace, or even hope is definitely the fuel to my abhorrence.”“I loved how raw this book was, there were parts of it that made me SO widely uncomfortable but still, I just couldn't put it down !!
Adele was a character that could easily be hated but tbh, I felt sorry for her rather than frustrated, she needed to be wanted and her husband just wasn't doing that for her, regardless of the sex addiction.
I highly recommend!”
About Leila Slimani
Leila Slimani is the bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny, one of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year, for which she became the first Moroccan woman to win France's most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt. She won the La Mamounia Prize for Adèle. A journalist and frequent commentator on women's and human rights, she is French president Emmanuel Macron's personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture and was ranked #2 on Vanity Fair France's annual list of the Fifty Most Influential French People in the World. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, she now lives in Paris with her French husband and their two young children.
Other books by Leila Slimani
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