Is Adèle a sex addict?
I don’t really know. I am a writer, not a doctor, so I can’t really make a diagnosis. Richard is the one who labels Adèle a sick person. For him, this is the only way to accept their situation. He has to think that this problem of hers is a pathology, that Adèle is a victim, and that he is going to find a cure.
You’re well known for your feminism in France and now in this country. When you made the decision to write this character, were you at all concerned that your readers would judge her in ways you didn’t intend?
No, never. When I write I never think of the reader. I am completely focused on my characters. I want them to be real, to be human, and I hope that the reader will like them as much as I like them. I love literature because I think that it is maybe one of the only experiences where you can stop judging people. A place where you can try to understand them, even if they are very different from you, even if they are doing bad things.
Adèle’s mother accuses her of never being satisfied and overestimating the importance of men. What do you see as the root of the emptiness Adèle feels?
In the book, I try not to give an answer, and I really don’t want to search for a psychological explanation. My point was to avoid looking for the root of this emptiness. I don’t really know where it comes from, and actually, I don’t really think that it matters. It would have been too easy to say, for example, that she is a sex addict because she was traumatized when she was a child. No, I wanted to embrace my character completely, to be with her in the present. And I hope that the reader will face what she is facing with her, without looking for an explanation that, in my view, is never sufficient to understand someone.
Adèle appreciates her status as a wife and mother not only for the social status it affords her, but as useful cover for her secret lifestyle. Her extreme deception is certainly unusual, but do you think your readers might see themselves in the broader point she’s getting at: that women can hide their true selves within these roles, and also wield their symbolic and social power?
I hope so! Actually, when I began to write, I was very much inspired by classical characters: Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, and Therese Desqueyroux. They are all married women, mothers, and they are all disappointed by their lives and their marriages. For a very long time, women didn’t have choices. If they wanted to belong to society and not be considered as outcasts or losers, they had to marry and to become mothers. But of course, they continued to have desires and secret dreams.
It is fascinating to watch Richard and Adèle’s relationship transform when she is finally exposed. Richard himself is also exposed, for his fixation with being a savior to her and for his cruel attempts to surveil and control her. But there are also moments of tenderness between them. Is there real love between them, or just a power struggle?
I think there is real love, but a very complex and violent love. Richard completely changes when he finds out about Adèle. And in the second part of the book, we wonder who is the craziest, Adèle or Richard? He is crazy in love with her, he is fascinated by this woman that he doesn’t completely understand. She is a mystery, and that’s probably why he is so attracted to her. And Adèle has a lot of gratitude for Richard, but I don’t think that she loves him. Adèle doesn’t know what love is. It is a feeling that she can’t really understand.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. On this page, Slimani writes of Adèle, “She understood that desire was unimportant.” What do you think this means? Why does Adèle feel so compelled to have sex with different men?
2. Did your opinion of Adèle change when you learned more about her relationship with her mother?
3. Every so often, it seems that Adèle is going to turn over a new leaf. For example, on this page, Slimani writes, “She is going to clean up her life. One by one, she is going to jettison her anxieties. She is going to do her duty.” Do you think she really wants to get better? Do you think she ever will?
4. Was Richard right to try to create a sense of routine and security for Adèle toward the end of the novel? What would you have done in his place?
5. How did you interpret the novel’s ending? Do you think Adèle will come back?
6. Did you feel sympathy for Adèle? What about for Richard?
7. Slimani has said that this novel was loosely based on the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French politician and former managing director of the International Monetary Fund who said that he was suffering from sex addiction after being charged with sexual assault in 2011. What do you think of Slimani’s decision to make the main character a woman?
8. Slimani’s first novel, The Perfect Nanny, was about a seemingly flawless nanny who ended up killing her two young charges. If you read The Perfect Nanny, did you notice any similarities between the two novels?
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Adèle Page 15