Vengeance is mine

Ndiaye Marie

"The moment the man hesitantly, almost fearfully, entered her office on January 5, 2019, Mrs. Sizan immediately remembered that she had already met him before, in a place whose memory came back so precisely, so violently, that he felt as if he had received a strong blow on the forehead.' The man's name is Gilles Principo and he asks the lawyer Cizane to take over the defense of his wife, who has killed their three children. The initial confusion is followed by questions: Why did Principo choose her, an unknown lawyer, for a case that was in the headlines and that all the big offices in Bordeaux would be willing to take on? Is Principo really the teenager she had met one afternoon thirty years ago and determined the course of her life? Marie Ndiaye's novel follows Madame Cizand with her name unknown until the end, the communication with her client Marlene Principo, the relationship with her parents and the people in her immediate environment. The more facts and information are added, the more questions and doubts arise. The atmospheric narrative is reminiscent of a psychological thriller: uncertainty, complexity, mystery, a creeping threat weave a spider's web around the heroine. Madame Cizand's doubts about the past but also about the present, the suffocating microcosm of the family, the confusion, the spread of evil, the cold, ambiguous and suffocating climate are rendered with exquisite skill. As for the title of the book, which the author reveals is a phrase from Deuteronomy ("in the day of vengeance I will repay" Dt32,35), it is a riddle that the reader must solve: who is the person speaking, the person being avenged ;