PositiveThe Rumpus... a tensely strung, socially provocative character study ... Despite the ostensible clarity of her prose style, meaning often seems to lie tangled up in some undergrowth below the sentences, just out of reach. This lends an interesting flavor to the anxiety-fueled narrative of the novel: heavy on the conventionally dodged present tense, ironically economical with words and sparse with information, and evoking, no doubt intentionally, more questions than it answers. What worked seamlessly in Lullaby works nearly as well in Adèle, which trades the gripping element of public criminality for the exploration of private criminality. Slimani’s style tends to produce the fascinating if disconcerting effect of urging you to believe entirely in what you read, which is only magnified by the sustained sense that Adèle’s thoughts appear totally uncensored, and therefore, totally honest ... Any attempted study of Adèle is disorienting at best, like chasing a shadow of a person who may well be honest and free with her thoughts as you read, but somehow slips out of focus when examined ... while Adèle is not as accessible or as smooth a read as Lullaby, it is a feat in that it charts the variances of human complexity, of disgust and desire, and of total psychological collapse. Adèle is not interested in diagnosis, but it provides a terrifying and painfully intimate portrayal of what it might be like to live inside the head of a woman who is a prisoner to her addiction.
