Vengeance Is Mine -- Marie Ndiaye, Hardcover

From the best-selling author of Three Strong Women comes a thrilling novel about a triple homicide that dredges up unsettling memories from a lawyer's childhood.

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.

Author: Marie Ndiaye
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 10/17/2023
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.35h x 5.83w x 1.26d
ISBN: 9780593534243

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 05/01/2023 pg. 4
Publishers Weekly 07/31/2023
Kirkus Reviews 09/01/2023
Booklist 09/15/2023 pg. 16

About the Author
MARIE NDIAYE was born in Pithiviers, France, and studied linguistics at the Sorbonne. She is the author of Rosie Carpe, winner of the Prix Femina, and of Three Strong Women, winner of the Prix Goncourt. She is also the recipient of the Gold Medal in the Arts from the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts. She lives in Berlin.