Adèle
CBC Books | | Posted: January 15, 2019 5:53 PM | Last Updated: January 16, 2019
Leila Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor
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. (From Penguin Books)
From the book
Adèle has been good. She has held out for a week now. She hasn't given in. She has run 20 miles in the past four days. From Pigalle to the Champs-Elysées, from the Musée d'Orsay to Bercy. In the mornings she has gone running on the deserted banks of the Seine. At night on the Boulevard de Rochechouart and the Place de Clichy. She hasn't touched a drop of alcohol and she has gone to bed early.
But tonight she dreamed about it and she couldn't fall back asleep. A torrid dream that went on forever, that encountered her like a breath of hot wind. Now Adèle can think of nothing else. She gets up and drinks a strong black coffee. The apartment is silent. In the kitchen she hops about restlessly. She smokes a cigarette.
From Adèle by Leila Slimani, trans. by Sam Taylor ©2019. Published by Penguin Books.