Leïla Slimani

Adèle

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

Amanda Autumn Berrey

This doesn’t end, Adèle. No, this doesn’t end. Love is only patience. A pious, fanatical, tyrannical patience. An unreasonably optimistic patience.

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

Richard never felt sex was important. Even when he was young it never gave him any great pleasure. He always got a bit bored while he was doing it. It seemed to last a long time. He felt incapable of playing the role of a passionate lover, and—stupidly—he had thought that Adèle would be relieved by the feebleness of his desire. Like any intelligent, sophisticated woman would be. He thought that, compared to all he had to offer her, sex was negligible. In public he would sometimes pretend a little bit, partly for appearances’ sake and partly to reassure himself. He would make a vulgar remark about a girl’s bottom. He would imply to his friends that he’d had a one-night stand. He wasn’t proud of this. The truth was he never thought about sex.

“At the end, I was scared all the time. I had the feeling that I’d lost control. I was tired. I had to stop. But I never would have believed that he could forgive me.”

I understand she cheated on him but he's acting very toxic and displaying abuse

“Pack your bags and go.” “What? Now? What about Lucien? I haven’t even said good-bye to him.” “Get out of here!” he yelled. He hit her with his crutches and pushed her into the bedroom.

So he's aware that she has a sex addiction. I thought he assumed they were just affairs

He fully expected her to lose her mind, like any other addict deprived of her drug, and he was prepared for this eventuality.

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.

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.

She would have loved being married to a rich, absent husband. To the outrage of all those proud working women who surround her, Adèle wishes she could spend her days lazing around a large house with no objective other than to look beautiful when her husband returns. How wonderful it would be to get paid for her talent of giving men pleasure.

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.

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

Their lovemaking is not obscene enough or tender enough.

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.

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

Started off suuuuper slow but by the middle it was much more page-turning. The whole plot is intriguing and it talks about sex addiction in detail. Never really described any of the characters very deeply, which was odd but also added to the whole alluring vibe of the book. Very unique writing style where you feel removed from the story line. 

Zoey Novak

alina s

bro not Adele having sex with the corpse of her father….

This was my second time reading Adèle. I was very nervous going into this reread because my first time reading Adèle was very early in my "reading for fun" years. I am much more experienced now with literature so I was nervous it wouldn't be the same this time. I was so wrong. I love this book so much. I mightve loved it even more the second time around. It is dark and raw and honest. It contains graphic themes that can be very triggering so please read the content warnings before reading it. I still rate this book five stars. The bruising scene doesn't make me cringe as much as it use to since ive read much more disturbing books by now but it still was shocking. Definitely one of my favorite novels

Nadine 

A rather sad book - I’d agree with Ilse’s review if you want an accurate & intelligent dissection about why this book is interesting but didn’t quite get there.

Simon Harrison

Quick and enlightening - once I got the time to really read it, I zipped through it. Interesting characters, and veiled motivations, but ultimately it was a bit of a 'so what' - does anyone really care about these rich people and their damaged marriage? It's the kid you really feel for

Hazel Evans

I had high hopes for this book considering its subject matter. I started reading the English version and, at first, I thought that perhaps it was a shoddy translation job. It reads like it needs a few more edits. But after several more chapters I realised it was also just a bad story—or at least, not a story I can believe. It takes a subject so packed with depth and complexity and simplifies it to make it all about the shock value of sex addiction rather than anything actually insightful. It might work as a film, where facial expressions, voices, body language and music could hint at what was really going on under the surface, but in book-form it feels shallow.

Adèle

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