Review by Booklist Review
Be certain of your own reality before picking up this latest novel from French novelist NDiaye (The Cheffe, 2019), which questions truth as reflected in memory from its first pages. Meet French lawyer Maître Susane (called Me Susane throughout), a woman who practices law alone in Bordeaux, usually handling mundane cases like the residency application for her Mauritian housekeeper. Then Gilles Principaux attempts to engage her as defense attorney for his wife, charged in the drowning deaths of their three young children. Me Susane immediately perceives that she has met Gilles before, despite his showing no recognition of her, and plunges into internal questions about whether he was involved in an obscure childhood incident she recalls far differently than her parents do, causing resentful discord between her and them. Me Susane's domestic troubles overshadow her investigation of Marlyne Principaux's case, complicated by conflicting accounts from both spouses and the attorney's own increasingly splintered mental state. In this gripping psychological thriller, NDiaye's beautiful prose captivates.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Ndiaye's magnetic and intense latest (after That Time of Year) follows a French lawyer's downward spiral when she takes on a sensationalized murder case. Maître Susane, 42, is an undistinguished lawyer in Bordeaux whose life is upended when Gilles Principaux asks her to defend his wife, Marlyne, for the murder of their three children. Further complicating matters for Maître Susane is her housekeeper, Sharon, an undocumented Mauritian living in France with her husband and children: Maître Susane feels uncomfortable being her employer and so spares her such tasks as cleaning the toilet, and yet Sharon seems to dislike her, even, on one occasion, going as far as pretending not to see Maître Susane in a supermarket. Ndiaye's incendiary premise is really a jumping-off point to track her protagonist's roiling inner world: at one point, Maître Susane refuses to look at herself in the mirror, certain that "she wasn't feeling strong enough to choose between the rational woman and the woman who wasn't, but often understood things more rightly." The author is equally adept at both small-scale psychological character insight and virtuosic structural shifts--the highlight of the novel is a harrowing, unforgettable 10-page monologue that Marlyne delivers from behind bars. Ndiaye turns in another ferocious tale. (Oct.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A portrait of a woman on the verge of--or maybe beyond--a nervous breakdown. (Apologies to Almodóvar!) When Gilles Principaux hires Maître Susane to defend his wife, Marlyne, who's been accused of the murder of their three young children in Bordeaux, the attorney spirals into a web of obsession, suppression, and uncertainty. Somewhat convinced she has met Gilles before, during the course of a childhood encounter buried deep within her psyche, Maître Susane struggles to determine whether or not Principaux is actually the teenager who may have encouraged her dormant youthful enthusiasm and intelligence, or who may have taken advantage of that enthusiasm in a more troubling fashion. Her persistent questioning of her parents about the circumstance of that episode creates tension in the family and ruptures her relationship with them. Maître Susane's relationship with her otherwise exemplary housekeeper--an undocumented worker from Mauritius--falters as well due to the housekeeper's secretiveness (at least in the attorney's eyes) and her reluctance to provide Maître Susane with the documents needed to support her immigration paperwork. Caught between Marlyne and Gilles and their differing accounts of the domestic life which led up to the triple filicide, and increasingly concerned with the welfare of her own young "goddaughter-in-spirit," Maître Susane engages in projection and perseveration kickstarted by the appearance of Gilles in her office. NDiaye, winner of the Prix Goncourt, slowly delivers scene after scene of puzzling and ambivalent behavior on the part of her protagonist but also those in her orbit. A series of startling monologues by Marlyne and Gilles set out their positions in the drama, but Maître Susane's internal equilibrium is puzzlingly out of balance as she continually asks herself: Who is Gilles Principaux to me? A twisty and unsettling psychological puzzle. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
