2 Novels for Double Lives
Dear readers,
Considering the amount of flop sweat, vigilance and pure performance art it takes to be just one person in the world, I am always impressed by people who manage to lead double lives. Like the nest of Russian intelligence operatives recently uncovered in Brazil, secretly serving at the pleasure of the Kremlin while they posed for years as students, small business owners, even models. (Some evaded the Polícia Federal and got away; the rest were apparently undone by bogus birth certificates and 'gringo Portuguese,' among other things.)
The two books in this week's newsletter don't have much to do with beachy espionage, nor the shadowy cabals and gray trench coats of a John le Carré or Graham Greene novel. The protagonists here are, you could say, double agents of their own making: ordinary citizens whose unremarkable public personas serve as cover stories for stranger, seamier things. Their only real motive is self-preservation and the stakes (divorce, ignominy, maybe jail) are relatively low. But creating a whole second self without help from king or country? That deserves a deeper dive.
—Leah
'Adèle,' by Leila Slimani
Fiction, 2014 (2019 in America)
The French Moroccan writer and journalist Leila Slimani is probably best known for 'The Perfect Nanny,' a harrowing portrait of infanticide whose cool, ambiguous style defied its lurid Lifetime-y title. (Originally, it went by the more genteel 'Chanson Douce,' or 'Lullaby.') That book became a sensation in Slimani's home country in 2016, earning her a prestigious Prix Goncourt, and was released stateside not long after.
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