An immensely powerful biography from one of the bravest women in history Gisèle Pelicot, who dares to unmask rapists and a misogynistic legal system in France and do so with her own softly spoken steely courage. One not to miss!
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Genre: Biography, True Crime
Publisher: Penguin
Review in one word: Powerful
You no doubt would have heard of the case of Gisele Pelicot in recent years, an elderly Frenchwoman and a grand-mère whose monstrous husband was, for decades, drugging her and filming her being raped by dozens of men.
The story that shocked the world and led to all manner of salacious, sexist and rumour-filled tabloid news stories. In amongst it all Gisele refused to be reduced to a rubble of fear and horror.
Most women with lesser strength would have been broken to learn that their husbands were doing that. Instead Gisele, a softly spoken, gentle, traditional (as are many women of her generation) reveals her fierce emotional strength as she explains in her own words her own story.
The media throughout the case cast doubt upon her, as did the judiciary, which wanted to seed suspicion that she must have known what was happening to her. That she somehow consented.
Her husband Dominic or as she affectionately called him Doume was drugging her and meanwhile gaslighting her and their children that their mother was having memory lapses, possibly signs of early dementia.
In the meantime this monster was orchestrating men of all ages and backgrounds via the dark web to rape his own wife, hundreds of men, over decades.
It all sounds like a really confronting read! But honestly this book was profound in its ordinariness, the first chapter opens showing Gisele going through her daily cleaning and cooking routine, laying the dining table.
The power of this book lays in the fact that these were people who have the same values and ideas about life as most other people in western nations. These are likely your neighbours, friends, people you may know.
A lot of the book dissects Dominic and Gisele’s marriage and goes deep into their respective childhoods. Both came from working class backgrounds but where Gisele had loving parents and a mother who died tragically when she was only eight years old; Dominic had a deeply sadistic father who sexually abused Dominic’s disabled foster sister, later marrying her once his wife died (under highly suspicious circumstances).
Throughout the whole ordeal, many other people – her self-motivated first lawyer, the media, her neighbours, her children and their partners and the court-appointed psychologist – all wanted to impose upon her their own perception of who she was. A victim of domestic abuse, a subjugated woman and a slave, an emotionless enigma. Yet here in the book, we learn how Gisele feels about Dominic, her life and what happened to her – the only answer to the media circus that ever mattered!
After several years of hiding away in a remote village following the revelations, she is introduced to another man by mutual friends, who has also endured heartbreak as well (losing his wife to cancer), and miraculously, despite the huge betrayal she endured, Gisele is able to find love again with a new man Jean-Loup. She goes towards love, connection and light despite all that has befallen her, a sign of her inner strength.
“I know my story has fuelled disgust for men, but it has not done that for me. I know that the image the world had of me at that point was nothing more than of a woman who had been horrifically abused; if I had any memories of the ordeal, I’m sure that is what I would have been reduced to, and it probably would have killed me. But I was forged in a different time and place. The way I think about life was wrought at the moment of my mother’s final breath, when Papa leaned over her and whispered her name, and I squeezed her shoulder and begged her to wake up. In that instant I felt a wave of infinite love wash over me, far stronger than death. That sensation saved me, carried me through, and no doubt also blinded me and warped my judgement, considering everything I endured with Dominique. And yet the feeling persists: love is not dead. I am not dead. I still have faith in people. Once, that was my greatest weakness. Now it is my strength. My revenge.”
Gisele was buoyed up and given courage throughout the trial by the presence of hundreds of women who came every day to the court and gave her letters about how much they admire her courage in speaking out. This was truly a remarkable book, that both chronicles the darkest parts of human nature and the celebrates the courage to love in spite of it all.
I highly recommend this book.
Content Catnip 