Leila Slimani

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 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 Novel

Adèle

Amanda Autumn Berrey

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

It’s no use anyway. Wanting to is the same as giving in. The dam has been breached. What good would it do to hold back now? Life wouldn’t be any better. She’s thinking like a drug addict, like a gambler. She’s been so pleased with herself for not yielding to temptation for a few days that she has forgotten about the danger.

Their lovemaking is not obscene enough or tender enough.

“I’m late for work. I’ll call you.” “Up to you,” replies Adam.

Adèle doesn’t like her job. She hates the idea that she must work to make a living. The only ambition she ever had was to be looked at.

She finds her life small, shabby, lacking in grandeur. Their money smells of work, of sweat and long nights spent at the hospital. It has an aftertaste of reproachful looks and bad moods. It is not a passport to idleness or decadence.

This is her favorite 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.

Simone swallows a mouthful of gin and clicks her tongue against her incisor. “People who are never satisfied destroy everything around them.”

Adèle quotes

Join the club