A review of the transgressive novel Elle by Ibtissam El Azami, followed by an interview of the protagonist, Elle – a world-in-world view behind the scenes!
Since I have already written a review/presentation of my very first novel, Bianka, one of the darkest I’ve written so far, I thought I would do it for all my novels, including Tester and Find the Liar (first book of the Echoën Fallacy trilogy), and of course, Elle.
If you haven’t read Elle yet, I suggest you do so before reading this review article, because, as you will see, there is no redemption offered at the end of this novel.
Like many of my novels, it is a social critique as well as a naturalistic and absurd work, which is quite normal, I think, given my favorite authors: Zola, Maupassant, and Camus.
Reading Elle is an experience in itself, which I wanted to translate through a two-voice diary format, where the protagonists speak to each other without ever truly hearing one another.
It is an exploration of perinatal grief, but it is also an exploration of the mechanism of addiction through alcoholism, and finally, it is the death of a relationship that one suspects, while hoping for the opposite.
Elle is an intimate novel where I, Ibtissam El Azami, take you, readers and discoverers of my universe, to witness the collapse of a couple, and where I invite you to understand the reasons for it.
On one side, Elle, a fractured artist and darker reflection of myself, who tries to drown in alcohol the death of her baby, for whom she cannot mourn. The idea behind her character is to show that keeping everything inside is perhaps the worst of relational evils.
On the other side, Chris, her partner, with his more logical approach, of erasing the pain by pretending it doesn’t exist.
Here we have two characters who do not know how to manage their pain, leading to an impossibility of speaking, hearing, and understanding each other to move forward together.
Who is the most vulnerable of the two? Who is wrong, who is right? No one. And that is exactly what makes the book Elle what it is, because very often, in a couple, both points of view are defensible.
As in Bianka, where I already explored the intimate cruelty of addiction, I pushed Elle to transform her apartment into a place she no longer recognized as safe, with a deafening fear of abandonment that turns into paranoia. I wanted to show all the details of these hopes that become relapses, self-hatred, and finally, all the abominable truths of alcohol addiction.
Even when I gave Elle moments of hope, with her month spent in a rehab center or the long-awaited exhibition in Le Marais, I wanted to ensure that her inner void always persisted. The success that was supposed to be a new light in her life becomes suffocating, a new stage to endure, at a time when alcohol has definitively taken over her will to be.
This novel questions the place of art in an artist’s life, and the place of addiction in creation; at what point is it appropriate to detach oneself from addiction to save one’s own life, and one’s own art?
Elle is not a story of detox or renewal. It is my own documentation of what happens when a vulnerable person chooses to turn the situation around and consciously chooses to embrace the void.
Interview – 10 Questions with Elle
For this post, I decided to sit down and interview Elle, the protagonist of the novel. Or rather, I am interrogating a fractured, self-destructive shadow of my own psyche. Here are the 10 questions I asked her about her descent into the abyss.
Ibtissam: Let’s start with baby Romi. I am so sorry for your loss. Chris packed away the baby’s things because he thought moving on was the recipe for happiness. Was hiding your “flash” bottles of vodka in the toilet tank and the washing machine your way of maintaining control over a secret in a home where your grief was erased?
Elle: I didn’t feel loved, listened to, or heard, and for me, every hiding spot was a way to remain free because I realized our communication was failing since we didn’t have the same expectations for life or even the same priorities. At one point in our lives, we found each other, until we both eventually drifted away.
Ibtissam: You are a talented painter, and alcohol seems deeply tied to your creative process. You even painted your own desperate version of The Scream after draining three bottles. Does the vodka fuel the art, or does the art demand the vodka?
Elle: At this point in my life, the two are intimately linked, and I find that I cannot drink without creating, just as I cannot create without drinking.
Ibtissam: Throughout the journal entries, you push Chris away with meticulous cruelty, practically daring him to abandon you, yet you beg him to stay when he pulls back. Why did you feel the need to test his love until it finally broke?
Elle: He was so detached, unfortunately, that I felt a need to push him just to make him react, though I never truly thought he would find comfort with someone else. But at that moment, he was no longer my priority, and I am sorry for that.
Ibtissam: You spent an entire month in rehab. You painted innocent children, wrote a beautiful letter to Chris, and held onto hope. What exactly snapped inside you when you returned to the apartment and eventually chose to buy those three flashes at Franprix?
Elle: You could say there was a need to feel something again because I was bored. I was bored to death, and I couldn’t create or paint as easily as I would have liked. I could use Chris as an excuse for my relapse, but even if he had his faults, I am the only one responsible for my life.
Ibtissam: When you found the long blonde hair on your pillow, you knew Chris had slept with Sophie. Honestly, did a dark part of you feel relieved that he finally became the villain you always accused him of being?
Elle: I kind of expected it, and even though I felt alone and unsupported emotionally, he felt alone both emotionally and physically. I have that clarity today, but I did the best I could with my pain at that given moment.
Ibtissam: You sold your paintings and landed a real exhibition with Aliénor Jacques in the Marais. It was everything you worked for. Why wasn’t that professional validation enough to stop you from drinking in the gallery’s bathroom?
Elle: When I drank there, it was to drown out the crowd, because if I paint, it is a solo act to transcribe my vision of the world. I just wanted a beautiful life for Romi, Chris, and me, but at that moment, there seemed to be no reason to reach for that success because I felt more alone than ever, and when I felt that way, the bottle was my best friend.
Ibtissam: One of the most painful moments is when you offer yourself to Chris in your satin robe, and he looks away, completely turned off, before locking himself in the bedroom. How did that ultimate physical rejection accelerate your descent?
Elle: When he did that, I knew time was running out, and I also felt through his rejection that his attention was already elsewhere. That is exactly what accelerated my descent, because I no longer felt validated as a woman, a girlfriend, or an artist, and it was just the final straw.
Ibtissam: You hate the cashier at Franprix because she looks at your hands and judges the bottles you buy. Yet, you keep going back in your slippers. Do you feel like society forces addicts to perform a pantomime of normalcy just to survive?
Elle: I’ve always been somewhat afraid of people, and in a way, that influenced me to the point of leaving my house in slippers, because if I dissociate and imagine they are just characters in a set, I feel better. I don’t like being perceived as anything other than through my art, and yes, society forces you to seem normal to be accepted—not just addicts.
Ibtissam: In the final moments of the book, Chris packs his bags and escapes in a car while you are out buying juice and vodka. When you came back to the apartment and heard that hollow bing of your glass against the wooden table, did you realize the game was finally over?
Elle: I told myself he had taken his sweet time, but I had understood that he was in the process of leaving for several months already.
Ibtissam: As your creator, I wrote your story through an asymmetrical dual viewpoint. I exposed Chris’s utter exhaustion alongside your addiction, showing that your pain wasn’t the only one that mattered. Do you resent me for giving him a voice and exposing your selfishness?
Elle: At the beginning, when I started drinking, you could have called it selfishness, but at the end, it was no longer a choice. He had just as much of a right to be heard as I did, and in my opinion, an interview with him would have also been very interesting, but he didn’t want to see me again, and I understand that. Thank you, in any case, for giving me a voice, when you very well could have interviewed only Chris without inviting me here.
Elle is not just a story of a couple going bad; it is my attempt to understand the various reasons for the destruction of a relationship—the loss of a child, alcoholism, and an obsession with art. If you like to get to the bottom of things, this book is for you.
If you are into transgressive and psychological novels, check out my other novels Bianka and Tester.