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A sensual and shattering novel about infidelity, lust and the loneliness of losing everything, set among the dusty lanes and rolling valleys of 1930s rural Belgium. First published in 1937.
About the author
Madeleine Bourdouxhe was born in Belgium in 1906. La Femme de Gilles was her first novel. The outbreak of the Second World War interrupted her writing career, and her second novel, Marie, was published by a small Brussels press in 1943. In the mid-1980s her work was rediscovered, and was translated into several different languages. A volume of short stories, A Nail, a Rose, first appeared in English in 1989, followed by translations of La Femme de Gilles and Marie. Bourdouxhe died in 1996.
Summary
Elisa is Gilles' wife and her devotion to him is passionate and all-consuming. Her daily life is permeated by thoughts of him - thoughts of his return from the factory, thoughts of his footsteps on the path as he arrives home each evening, when, in the minutes before his return, she is overcome with paralysing anticipation.
But when Gilles suddenly finds himself powerfully and helplessly attracted to Elisa's younger sister, Victorine, Elisa's world is overturned. The joys of home and family are destroyed and her desperation is so profound that it begins to threaten her every sense of reality and the core of her existence.
Set among the dusty lanes and rolling valleys of rural Belgium in the 1930s, La Femme de Gilles is a sensual and shattering novel about infidelity, lust, and the loneliness of losing the one thing that matters most.
Foreword
'Desire takes hold suddenly, out of nowhere.'
