Vengeance Is Mine

Marie NDiaye with Jordan Stump (trans.)

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Vengeance Is Mine won the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist recognition and was a The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, The New Yorker Best Book of the Year, TIME Best Book of the Year, The Washington Post Best Book of the Year, The Guardian Best Book of the Year, CrimeReads Best Book of the Year, and Words Without Borders Best Book of the Year. The heroine of Marie NDiaye's new novel is Maître Susane, a quiet middle-aged lawyer living a modest existence in Bordeaux, known to all as a consummate and unflappable professional. But when Gilles Principaux shows up at her office asking her to defend his wife, who is accused of a horrific crime, Maître Susane begins to crack. She seems to remember having been alone with him in her youth for a significant event, one her mind obsesses over but can't quite reconstruct. Who is this Gilles Principaux? And why would he come to her, a run-of-the-mill lawyer, for such an important trial? While this mystery preoccupies Maître Susane, at home she is increasingly concerned about Sharon, her faithful but peculiar housekeeper. Sharon arrived from Mauritius with her husband and children, and she lacks legal residency in France. But while Maître Susane has generously offered Sharon her professional services, the housekeeper always finds ways to evade her, claiming the marriage certificate Maître Susane requires is being held hostage. Is Sharon being honest with Maître Susane, or is something more sinister going on? Told in a slow seethe recalling the short novels of Elena Ferrante and the psychological richness of Patricia Highsmith's work, Vengeance Is Mine is a dreamlike portrait of a woman afflicted by failing memories and a tortured uncertainty about her own past that threatens to become her undoing.