Reviews

Vengeance Is Mine by Marie NDiaye

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emspeid's review

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

dinosaursauce's review

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challenging mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

abbie_'s review against another edition

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mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

I've developed a not-so-great pattern with Marie NDiaye's work where I read something that blows me away (LaDivine, That Time of Year), but then immediately that's followed by something either incomprehensible or straight-up dull (La Cheffe, Among Family). Vengeance is Mine falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, along with Self-Portrait in Green. There are flashes of brilliance, passages that sweep me up in their creativity and rhythm, only to then unceremoniously dump me into ten pages of confusion, head-scratching.

Vengeance is Mine is sort of a legal drama. Maître Susane takes on a case for a man she may or may not know, whose wife has been charged with murdering their three children in cold blood. Such a premise makes it seem impossible that certain portions of this book would send me to sleep, but here we are. Maître Susane becomes obsessed with figuring out whether she and Monsieur Gilles shared a life-changing encounter when she was an adolescent, while accompanying her mother to one of the houses she cleaned. Her parents don't want to talk about it, convinced that something inappropriate happened, whereas Maître Susane thinks something positive happened. It's very odd, a tad unsettling. There's also a semi-related storyline where Maître Susane is attempting to get a visa sorted for her undocumented cleaner.

The strongest part of the novel by far were the sections featuring the woman who has killed her children. There's a devastating monologue which highlights the boxes mothers are placed into, the ridiculously high pressure they're under, and the suffocating nature of mothering.

Jordan Stump has translated most of NDiaye's works, and at this point I think he just has to. Her style is so strange, so opaque, I feel like other translators would blanch at the thought. There are passages where rhythm is SO important, that to mess up the translation of that would be to completely butcher the impact.

If ambiguity is not your thing, don't bother with this one. There's an interview with NDiaye which I found quite funny where she fully says she knows nothing further about her characters than we do. Everything she knows is there - real intentions? Loose ends? Marie NDiaye does not care, her characters let her in on their secrets as they see fit.

Confusing and perhaps not worth the time I spent trudging through it. But will I continue to seek out the rest of NDiaye's oeuvre? For those stunning moments of genius, yes.