This is a deeply unpleasant book. It’s an exploration of sex addiction but in my view not a successful one. In fact, I quite fail to see the point of it as it doesn’t, in my view, offer any insight or understanding of the condition. Adele is a lacklustre journalist, married to a doctor and with a young son. An inner emptiness compels her to seek some sort of fulfilment in degrading, humiliating and often dangerous sexual encounters. Encounter after encounter is described in tedious detail. The story is narrated from Adele’s point of view and she comes across as shallow and self-obsessed, unwilling or unable to control her impulses. I found her completely unlikeable and unsympathetic, which surely defeats the object (if there is one) of the book as a serious attempt to make her compulsion believable, which might have engaged the reader’s sympathy. The author posits a couple of bleak childhood memories as the cause, but these are not traumatic enough to be convincing. It’s not at all a skilful character study, and any insight into female sexuality is sadly lacking. Adele’s actions are strangely regressive rather than subversive and ultimately tawdry and uninteresting. The marriage is also under-explored. Is it credible that the husband doesn’t notice there is something wrong? One has to assume there at least originally there was an attraction between them, but Adele’s attitude now seems to come out of nowhere. I’m sure there is place for an intelligent and illuminating study of sexual addiction in fiction, but this certainly isn’t it.

‘This is her favourite moment. The moment before the first kiss, nudity, intimate caresses. That moment of anticipation when everything is still possible and when she is the mistress of the magic. She greedily drinks a mouthful of wine. A drop trickles over her lips and down her chin and drips on to the collar of her white dress before she can stop it. It’s a detail of the story and she was the one who wrote it.’

Raw, unflinching, visceral; this is Leïla Slimani’s first novel, originally published in 2014 (as ’Dans le jardin de l’ogre’), two years before ‘Lullaby’ (‘Chanson douce’) burst on the literary scene and made her a bestseller across the world. It is sometimes a tricky job for a reader to go back to an earlier work, even a first work, once they have read other pieces by an author, and it is certainly true to say that ‘Adèle’ is not the finished article, a little rough round the edges at times.

However, it is an astonishing exploration of addiction and self-destruction that never shies away from its subject matter. Adèle is a seemingly happy wife and mother, working as a journalist with a husband (a doctor), a young son and a Paris apartment. But beneath the surface she is a compulsive sex-addict and, as the book progresses, we see the downward spiral of addiction and compulsion eat away at Adèle’s seemingly perfect life. The sex scenes are not as graphic as you might believe; rather, it is the anticipation, the need to be wanted, the planning and risk of one-night stands and random pick-ups that drives the central character. There are hints throughout the book at a troubled childhood and a dull, boring – but settled – marriage, but this isn’t a psychological study of Adèle, and it never strays into excuses or explanations. Her actions are reckless, violent at times, and as her life spirals out of control the repercussions are devastating. This is not a thriller or a mystery but the plot does turn in ways you might not expect, and the ending is suitably open-ended, unresolved. Indeed, its final words are: ‘we’re not finished’.

Stylistically this is an interesting book, written in the present-tense third-person, so it feels like we are watching events unfold immediately before us: ‘In the carriage, Adèle looks around. A man in a cheap suit is watching her. He has badly shined shoes with pointed tips. He’s ugly. He might do.’ I can imagine some readers might tire of this constant referencing of ‘she looks’ or ‘Adèle leaves’, but for me it works in this case. And, at the point in the story when events mean that her husband becomes more of a central figure in the plot, there is a sudden change; now it becomes ‘Richard says nothing’ or ‘he sleeps’. Clever, understated, but crucial in the perspective of the plot and our reading of it. None of the characters, it’s fair to say, are particularly appealing. We are not meant to like Adèle, or even sympathise with her. Her husband, both sets of parents, even the child Lucien are all pretty appalling. And yet, and yet…. I found myself deeply involved, mesmerised – like watching a slow-motion car-crash of a life unravelling before me. And I did care about what happened, so Slimani must have done something right.

As I said at the start, this is a raw, unsentimental, unflinching look at the destructiveness of a compulsion, and a character trying to balance a normal family life with an addiction. It is a powerful, studied, at times lyrical, exploration of a central female protagonist. As in the extract I chose to start this review, it is full of little touches, signs, details that have a wider significance. The book is not perfect, I’ll grant that, but it will carry you along and, together with ‘Lullaby’, affirms Leïla Slimani as an important and powerful voice in contemporary European literature.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of the book.)

Adéle was an interesting book that I finished in less than 24hrs (granted, it’s not actually that long!) . I read Lullaby (The Perfect Nanny in the US) and I found that different, so I was intrigued to read Leila Slimani’s second novel.
Adéle is a Parisian wife to Richard and mother to little Lucien. They have a seemingly content life, nice apartment, good jobs. But she is not happy. She is trapped in a life that she never wanted, she only married and agreed to have a child to seem normal. She can’t stand for people to find out who she really is. For Adéle is a very complicated, haunted, damaged person. She can’t find fulfilment in her marriage, in motherhood, in her job. She seeks momentary pleasures from unknown men, anytime, anywhere. She lies to everyone. Possibly including herself. She tries hard to stop. She can’t. Only temporarily when they move out of Paris finally. But it doesn’t last.
I find Leila Slimani’s books raw. I don’t really enjoy reading books that are so vulgar and write about sex so openly (similar to an erotic novel) but there’s something about the plainness of her writing that is just so pulling and entertaining, that you have to read it and you have to read it fast. I find her books refreshingly different from my normal reads and maybe that’s why I enjoy it? Her characters are almost evils, damaged souls who can’t help but destroy others around them.
If you’re long for something different, a portrayal of the darkness of human nature in a digestible form, then this is for you!

Thank you for NetGalley, Leila Slimani and Faber and Faber for my free advanced copy to read and review!

Adele is the story of a Parisian woman who on the surface has the perfect life,a good job,lovely home,successful husband and a young child. Despite having a life that many would deem idyllic she's bored , frustrated and leading a hidden second life as a sex addict. In lesser hands than author Leila Slimani the story could have been tawdry and titillating but the devastating effect Adele's addiction has on her life is skilfully related and while her assignations might seem erotic the reader is left very aware of the emptiness and hollowness inside of a very troubled character. Also it has to be said a character that it's very hard to like.
The plot could be summed up in a couple of lines but it's beautifully written and a devastating look at addiction and how it ruins the lives of not only the addict but their families and friends.
It's not a happy read,in fact it's very bleak and the ending is quite heart-breaking. Maybe it had more of an effect on me than others having once been in a relationship with someone with a different kind of addiction but an addict is an addict and Ms Slimani has nailed the behaviour of such people precisely.
There is a lot of sex and some of it is quite disturbing but it's an insightful look into someone spiralling out of control while looking for fulfilment that always seems to elude her.

Big thanks to Leila Slimani ,Faber&Faber and Netgalley for the review copy of a powerful and quite moving book.

This is a strange book. The main character is unlikeable and the story feels lacking in depth. It’s quite a quick read but to be honest the characters don’t have the appeal to draw this out any longer. This didn’t live up to what I was hoping for from Leila Slimani.

I am a huge fan of Leila Slimani's first book, Lullaby [The Perfect Nanny] so I was very excited to read Adele. I have to confess I would have not read Adele had I not read Lullaby and know just how good Slimani's writing can be.

Unfortunately, Adele was a disappointment. Even in the first few sentences and pages, I felt like something was off. It felt stilted and I quite frankly wasn't sure if I wanted to keep reading. By the half-way point, I felt like nothing had happened and it wasn't building to anything. Adele is not a realistic character; I didn't get to know the inner workings of her mind, it was like hearing someone else describe her to me when they didn't know her that well either.

I struggled to see a plot or a storyline. It just jumped from one vague scenario to another and I found my interest waning. There were points where I grimaced and felt uneasy due to the graphic nature of the text (which I do not have an issue with, it made it more interesting) but these moments of heightened interest were few and far between.

The meaning of the ending eluded me entirely despite reading it several times. I felt that some people didn't 'get' Lullaby. Maybe I don't 'get' Adele. All I know is that sadly this book just wasn't for me. I would definitely read Slimani's work in the future as I know how good it can be.

Having read her previous book,and felt I'd missed something,going on all the praise,I was keen to give this a read.
I think I missed something again.
I just came away with an impression of a sad woman who I didn't like at all. In fact not sure I liked anyone in this book.
Maybe it's a sign of good writing that I felt Adele to be a sad and pitiablecharacter,rather than a selfish cow. I don't know.
I don't think this author is for me really.

The first two thirds were great. Dirty, sordid, despicable, evoking a queasy feeling of debauchery. Slimani perfectly captures Adele’s desires. The final third... not quite as great as the first two, but successful in showing the change in Richard and Adele’s lifestyle.

I really enjoyed this book, which was like a more visceral version of Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. Adele is a complex and interesting character who is struggling against a number of mental health issues. These manifest in her intense (and graphic) sex addiction. This book is hard to read but is equally fascinating. This is the first Leila Slimani book I've had the pleasure of reading and I'll definitely check out her other work The Nanny.

"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.

Adèle is a journalist, wife and mother but she is also an addict and desperate to feel something.

Whilst this book is not for the faint hearted, there are a number of somewhat graphic and disturbing scenes, it is a very compelling read. Slimani writes women very well (I have read both of her latest novels) and the translator has done a very good job of capturing the story in the English language.

Trigger warnings: addiction, drug misuse and sexual violence.

Part 'Madame Bovary' part 'Belle de Jour', on the surface Adele Robinson also appears to have it all - a beautiful home in one of the desirable arrondissement of Paris, a doctor husband, Richard, an adorable son, Lucien, and a successful career as a journalist. However, beneath this wafer-thin veneer, lies a very different woman, one driven by an insatiable desire for men and for them to treat her in increasingly degrading ways. One of her fondest memories of an illicit encounter is the fact that the nameless man spat on her.
As her world starts to derail and her lies unravel, a weird amour fou continues to keep her and her husband together, in a twisted vision of normalcy and perfection. They move to a place in the country, close to his family, in a hope to escape the temptations of Paris.
The phrase "there's a thin line between love and hate" is vividly portrayed in this relatively short, but fascinatingly engrossing tale. This is not a novel for someone looking for some cheap smutty thrills, rather a fascinating portrayal of addiction and the risks that people will take to fulfill their desires - Adele to quench the thirst of her urges and Richard to fuel his jealous possessiveness of his wife. A fascinating read, but not for the prudish or puritan of heart.