Her singing and songwriting career includes recording, performing live, and writing for such diverse acts as Thomas Dolby, Tears for Fears, Culture Club, Whitney Houston, Scritti Politti, Sheena Easton, Jellybean Benitez, Lydia Lunch, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, the Pointer Sisters, and John Lurie. Adèle hat alles: den vorzeigbaren Arzt-Ehemann und niedlich-Sohn, den Job bei der Tageszeitung, die schicke Wohnung in Paris. With no end in sight from her increasingly out-of-control behaviour, how long can she keep her private life from being exposed?

However, when you finish Adèle you end up feeling how a story about a sex addict could end up being so vanilla? Slimani claims she wrote this novel after being inspired by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, wanting, she said, to look at the phenomenon of sex addiction through a female perspective. A journalist in Paris, married to a surgeon, Adèle is mother to an angelic 3-year-old boy and lives in a beautiful apartment. In reality, she is in hell, feeling dissatisfaction and alienation that can only be quelled (temporarily) by casual sexual encounters. But it’s impossible to relax with his wily mother-in-law, and beautiful ex-girlfriend always around.

I was a little hesitant with this one only because I don't really enjoy erotica or tons of gratuitous sex scenes in my books and obviously with the main character being a sex addict I thought that maybe I was venturing out of my comfort zone too much. One of the most original, amazing stories I've ever read” (Mary Gaitskill), iconic rock-and-roll musician Adele Bertei’s memoir Twist is her harrowing and electric story of transforming trauma through art, pluck, and imagination, as told through the inimitable voice of her young alter ego, Maddie Twist. This book is written in an amazing, fast pace, and you will never notice how you have scrolled through the pages and hours have passed.

The wider world hovers at the edges: Adèle’s brief enthusiasm for her work leads to an immersion in the revolutions of north Africa, before journalism too becomes part of “the whole idiotic charade”; towards the end of the novel comes a reference to her Algerian father’s sense of dislocation from his roots and her mother’s indifference to it.Though there are intriguing hints of North African awareness in here – the story takes place against the background of the Tunisian Revolution, and Adèle's father, Kader, is (we can infer) from the region. When Dora settles into the chateau, she has a funny feeling about the place and the people that she is on holiday with. She hires hotel rooms, drags them into alleyways, drops to her knees in the cloakrooms of dinner parties. I wonder how many book reviews – my own, and other people's – have begun with the words '[name of main character] seems to have it all'. This also has a terrific sense of place – it's a great Paris novel, full of the city's meaningful geography, and Adèle herself is a quintessential Parisienne, who feels an existential horror at her husband's plan to move to a big house en province.

They combine the pace of the thriller with the flatness of tone that we might associate with Michel Houellebecq, or indeed with Camus and Robbe-Grillet. An entertaining, insightful journey on the relationship rollercoaster in this exhilarating collection of short stories. Once ‘the Devil ran through’ her family, Maddie free falls from institution to institution, growing into her queerness and discovering her fate—that ‘God has to be music. I found myself wondering what kind of novel it could be if her husband were better in bed, or if Adèle were less submissive and had moved further beyond Emma Bovary in her desires. Along the way we encounter an unforgettable schizophrenic mother, Catholic saints, West Side Story and Oliver!kažkas tarp - ar gal greičiau PO - kareninos, bovari, nu ir žinoma kunderos, ir visi šitie yra nu totaliai ne mano. One evening, en route to their annual holiday destination, they run out of fuel in a remote location.

The authors struggle to distinguish the voices of the three protagonists, occasionally causing them to blend together. Because her life requires so many lies, it has to be carefully organized—an exhausting activity that occupies her entire brain, that gnaws at her. Both books are very good at showing that there can be a kind of gleeful pleasure in overcoming your fears by living them out, losing the things you are most desperate to hold on to.

There are not any big reveals or twists, but the inside glimpse at this woman’s life is perfectly gripping. Just when she seemed to have left the pain behind, a harrowing divorce and a career-threatening throat injury brought new darkness and doubt to her doorstep.