Couple Mechanics

September 15, 2015
The title perfectly captures the tone of French author Alard's second novel, which examines a marriage in crisis as if it were a working, or perhaps broken, machine. In 2003, techie Juliette and her husband, Olivier, are the Parisian equivalents of Brooklynites, raising their two adored children in a formerly rough but gentrifying Parisian neighborhood where they are surrounded by a circle of like-minded, urbane friends. Then Olivier announces that for three weeks he's been sleeping with a socialist politician he met in his work as a reporter. Olivier says he wants to stay married but needs time to break things off with emotionally fragile Victoire. Juliette hasn't forgotten that days after their first kiss, Olivier betrayed her by meeting another woman; he and Juliette didn't get back together for three years. Looking back, it would be easy to blame Olivier for his pattern of betrayal, but as he and Juliette struggle to repair their relationship, overtly simple explanations become tangled in the complexity of their connection to and resentments against each other. Olivier has acted abominably and remains difficult to trust, but Juliette-despite a history that includes her father's abandonment when she was 5, an abortion, and a rape-refuses to let anyone consider her a victim. As much as she wants to fall to pieces, she doesn't. Alard records the couple's evolution moment to moment-internal thoughts, endless conversations, and a range of telling gestures-in obsessively minute detail. For Juliette, sex becomes an expression of feelings but also a tool. Olivier backslides with phone calls and meetings that he at first hides from Juliette as he gradually disengages from Victoire. Page by page, the marriage's survival is uncertain. More jaded and demanding than most American domestic tragicomedies, this novel packs a surprising emotional wallop, raising questions about the natures of passion and marriage within the context of early-21st-century French politics with references to France's Muslim veil controversy and Simone de Beauvoir.

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November 1, 2015

This tightly wound novel about a Parisian love triangle is told from the perspective of Juliette, a wife, mother, and computer engineer. Her husband Olivier's mistress, "V," is a local politician and drama queen. V plays the feminist in public and the crazy stalker in private. The three main characters collude in this drama, which is riddled with bad decisions and willful emotional anguish. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Olivier likes having two women fight over him, that he knows he is enabling V's obsession when he refuses to break up with her, and that he enjoys telling Juliette every detail of his conversations with V and knowing that his wife reads his mistress's email. Juliette will do anything to keep Olivier at home, even letting a hysterical V into their apartment. Readers never know if V is as emotionally unstable as Olivier claims, or if it is all performance on her part. VERDICT Surprisingly suspenseful, this literary/melodrama mashup is an intimate, claustrophobic, and compulsive read. Some may become frustrated and impatient with the couple, as the emotional chaos unfolds through one bad choice after another. However, even the most annoyed reader won't be able to put this novel down.--Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD

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