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In her life, nothing was going to happen, Flaubert writes inMadame Bovaryof his wayward young creation.
Such was the will of God!
The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.
And she destroys her family.
But that feeling of nothing happening haunts Emma until her bodys last wretched spasm.
Life has not been enough for her.
Flaubert might have adored or reviled Emma; that question is still up for debate.
Fuck likeable: she wasreal.
Villainous bitches are popping up everywhere.
As a mother who employs a nanny, I read it with relish and horror.
Just a year later, Slimani is back with another thriller,Adele.
The allusions toMadame Bovaryarent subtle.
Like Emma, Adele finds her life small, shabby, lacking in grandeur.
Where Emma is romance-obsessed, however, Adele isadmittedlysex-crazed, perhaps even clinically addicted.
She invites a stranger in an alley to slide his fingers inside her … against a green wheelie bin.
A dear friends crush drives her home from a gallery opening and puts his mouth between her legs.
Shes screwed her editor.
She embarks on a long, disastrous affair with a surgeon friend of Richards.
All this happens within weeks.
The affairs themselves are unfulfilling, though rarely guilt-inducing.
Ive never been so bored by kinky descriptions of cunnilingus or thrusting hips.
Adele is, of course, beautiful.
When shes upset she wants to vomit.
Adele is afraid of dying.
Adele doesnt like her job.
And Slimani, at least in her debut, doesnt like subtlety.
Instead,Adeleseems determined to shock us as much as the child murder inThe Perfect Nannydoes.
But whats shocking about a woman desperate for sex, for something to fill her?
Sure,Madame Bovaryprovoked an obscenity case against Flaubert.
The forthcomingMy Lovely Wife, aMr.
But by the time theGone Girlfilm debuted the following year, the paradigm had shifted.
Over in France, in thatannus horribilisfor Bad Girl Lit,Adelewas published to general acclaim.
Good work has come out of this trend.
Its striking how deftlyAdeles author went on to convey loneliness and paranoia inThe Perfect Nanny.
Louise, the nanny, is outed as a murderer from the first line.
Its shocking because the crime almost makes sense.
Iwantedto hate Adele, to find her repugnant, or glimpse a psychological revelation.
Give me more female protagonists to hate!
Like the most rote of villains, Adele is bad to the core.
Nothing can fix her or ameliorate her or convert her particular agony into a different sort.
So why should we care?
Bad books about one-dimensional women are, alas, still distorting perceptions 160 years later.
