The inclusion of lengthy soliloquies and daydreams adds to the complexity, making the reading experience somewhat challenging. Just when she seemed to have left the pain behind, a harrowing divorce and a career-threatening throat injury brought new darkness and doubt to her doorstep. What bothered me a little was the language though: It's not only that it is not lyrical, there even is a mechanical, über-obvious and sometimes bland quality to it, which you can certainly see as fitting if you consider the topic of the book, but it does not make for a captivating sound. Adèle is a tough read, but a bracing one; little concerned with reader-pleasing narrative treats, but provocatively enigmatic.

In many ways, Adèle is a modern-day Madame Bovary, but the book itself has less in common with Flaubert than with the sensation novels that Emma Bovary reads addictively.A Moroccan man that has lived in Rome long enough to believe he is Italian, with a Moroccan dust left in his soul. In this review, I'll take you through the intricacies of this novel, exploring the lives of three distinct individuals: Nadia, Elias, and Yaseer.

She appreciates her role in life for the social status it affords her and, most importantly, for the useful cover it provides for her secret compulsion. It was a very enjoyable book, I liked how it revolved around three different characters that didn’t have anything in common except for their love for Adele. While other men would pay hundreds to only have her body, he would pay thousands more to have her soul, even for a night.When life parts them from each other for eight years, Elias goes back to the same old city to look for her, and Malika has already left town. She comes up with a nice hook, adds a dash of humor to distract any readers who were expecting the article to provide some information. Like Flaubert, though, she empathises with her character, even at her silliest (Adèle falls asleep with her face in an ashtray), and occasionally we feel something like Flaubert’s interest in the nuances of Adèle’s mind.

Despite the affection she feels for her son and her husband, she can’t resist to seize every opportunity she gets – a dinner party with her husband’s colleagues, a visit of an art gallery, an after work drink - to give her body what it ask for. He feels trapped inside a routine and wants to escape, but he also believes in saving his marriage, and following his marriage counselor, they are trying to revive their happiest memories, and that is when they decide to go to an Adele concert in Rome. The extreme sex she craves and willingly submits to, the violence she longs to have her body subjected to….It appears that the authors invested considerable effort in weaving Adele's songs into the tapestry of their characters' lives but overlooked other crucial elements of storytelling.