I'd actually checked this out from the library once before, but ended up returning it before I got around to reading it. I decided to make another attempt for Women in Translation month. And woo, did I have a lot of feelings about it once I'd read it. In fact, I'd spent too much time thinking and talking about this book at the time that I was convinced I'd written a review long before I actually did.

This is one of those books where you (or I guess me) spend a lot of time wanting to give pretty much every character a good, vigorous shake. "What are you doing?" I wanted to yell at them. "How do you foresee your current course of action turning out?" I suppose that's to be expected in a book where, within the first twenty pages, the main character realizes her husband is having an affair with her sister and decides to pretend she doesn't know and just carry on normally until he comes to his senses?

But of course, it doesn't take very long to realize that none of her other choices are any good anyway. Her sister is terrible, her mother (though she doesn't know the full circumstance) babies her sister. A priest assigns her prayers of penitence and cautions against rebelling against His plans. And though Elisa spends endless time analyzing, buffering, and trying to manage Gilles's emotional state, it's soon clear that Gilles does not see Elisa as a person with any interiority at all -- she is merely what she does for him.

Of course I rooted for Elisa to rebel, to run away, but how could she? The final ending, sickening as it was, was also a kind of relief.

Both the Introduction and Afterword were incredibly helpful for contextualizing and processing this painful little story. As much as it hurt, I'm glad I gave it a second chance. A powerful novel. ( )

I wonder how many people would not have lived the part of one character or another in this brief discourse on betrayal? The husband who suddenly discovers an overwhelming passion for his sister-in-law. The sister-in-law who takes what she can from this whilst insolently uncaring about the devastation she wrecks. And the central character herself, the wife, who suddenly realises from the most trivial of information, that her husband and her sister are at it.

Rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/la-femme-de-gilles-by-mad... ( )

I wonder how many people would not have lived the part of one character or another in this brief discourse on betrayal? The husband who suddenly discovers an overwhelming passion for his sister-in-law. The sister-in-law who takes what she can from this whilst insolently uncaring about the devastation she wrecks. And the central character herself, the wife, who suddenly realises from the most trivial of information, that her husband and her sister are at it.

Rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/la-femme-de-gilles-by-mad... ( )

I wonder how many people would not have lived the part of one character or another in this brief discourse on betrayal? The husband who suddenly discovers an overwhelming passion for his sister-in-law. The sister-in-law who takes what she can from this whilst insolently uncaring about the devastation she wrecks. And the central character herself, the wife, who suddenly realises from the most trivial of information, that her husband and her sister are at it.

Rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/la-femme-de-gilles-by-mad... ( )

La Femme erzählt die Geschichte eines tödlichen Liebesdreiecks - geschrieben am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkriegs. La Femme de Gilles ist die Geschichte einer jungen Mutter, Elisa, deren Welt auf den Kopf gestellt wird, als sie entdeckt, dass ihr Mann Gilles sich in ihre jüngere Schwester Victorine verliebt hat. Elisa ist am Boden zerstört und entwirrt sich.

So kontrolliert wie Elena Ferrantes Die Tage der Verlassenheit und so treibend wie Jenny Offills Abtr. der Spekulation, La Femme de Gilles ist eine eindringlich zeitgenössische Geschichte von Verzweiflung und Lust und Besessenheit, von einer essentiellen früh-feministischen Schriftstellerin.