Book Review: A Hymn to Life
Here’s my review of A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot. Leave a comment if you’ve read it, plan to read it, or have any book recs. Then check out today's Flash Fiction Friday writing prompt!
A Hymn to Life: Shame has to Change Sides by Gisèle Pelicot, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver is one of the most difficult memoirs I have ever read or will ever read. But it’s also surprisingly bittersweet, as Gisèle refuses to let what her husband did to her define her, her memories, or her future. After reading this memoir, it’s crystal clear why she earned so much recognition for her role in updating rape laws in France, and how pivotal her unprecedented case was to calling attention to the widespread stigma survivors of rape and sexual abuse often encounter across the globe.
The memoir starts with the day Gisèle learns her husband was found upskirting at their local supermarket. Initially she believes that’s all he’s guilty of, until investigators tell her what they discovered on his laptop: photos and videos of him and other men raping her while she was drugged unconscious… at least 51 of them… for nearly a decade.
Due to the overwhelming evidence against her husband, Gisèle presses charges against him and he is incarcerated. She then goes home and tells her family what he did. Her three adult children are appalled and have various reactions, but her daughter is so distraught by the entire revelation that she has to be temporarily institutionalized when they discover a few inappropriate photos of her within her father’s collection.
At first, Gisèle wants to cling to the happy memories she had with her husband, not wanting to fully accept their entire relationship was all a lie, as then she would have to hate herself and her entire life and nearly every single one of her memories because she had met her husband when she was a teenager and they had practically grown up together, even escaping difficult lives at their respective homes to be together. They had also been through a lot of difficult times over the nearly 50 years they were together, and persevered, or so she had thought.
Before her husband’s trial is set, Gisèle moves out of the house she shared with him and little by little tries to figure out what to do next. During this period, she begins to unpack signs from the past that may have indicated who her husband really was and what he was capable of doing, mentioning his growing and lewd sexual appetite, which did not match her own sexual interests or appetites at all. Yet for all intents and purposes, she thought their sex life was ‘fine’ and ‘normal’ and was even tolerant of affairs if it kept him satisfied.
But as lawyers and investigators continue to dig through the videos and photos belonging to her husband, Gisèle starts piecing together when her multiple trips to the doctor due to minor injuries and bouts of memory loss (that were so bad she no longer felt safe enough to drive and would often be unable to recall entire days and evenings) started, discovering it all matched the timeline of when her husband started drugging and raping her, and inviting over others to rape her too.
Gisèle also learns more and more, with each passing day, about her husband’s sordid history of sexual violence and abuse and how he had raped other women as she prepares for trial, and that he even allegedly murdered one woman after raping her. At the same time, Gisèle also unpacks her own history and a complex web of memories and feelings about her own life and how everything started to unravel for her husband when she became more successful at her job while he struggled professionally.
At first, Gisèle refuses to watch the videos of her husband and other strange men raping her, as the descriptions from others are more than enough for her to understand the weight of what happened to her. But she ultimately needs to watch them for the case… and the descriptions of what she sees then shares with readers are vivid. Suffice it to say that one scene was so violent that a corpse-like Gisèle nearly choked to death and came away from it with a cracked tooth.
When the trial begins, Gisèle decides to make the trial public because she doesn’t want to own the shame she believes belongs to her perpetrators, including her husband, believing that ‘shame must change sides.’ This, of course, sets off a media storm with a cast of all sorts of characters with opinions and intentions, but Gisèle mainly focuses on the survivors who show up for her and thank her for coming forward and being a voice for them as they simultaneously give her a sense of purpose to stay strong during the trial when things get tough.
Throughout the memoir, Gisèle does not hold back. She uses straightforward language, making the details of what she went through all the more horrifying and traumatic and difficult to process, as none of the details she shares are sugarcoated or embellished— the simple facts of what happened are horrifying enough. Never wanting to only be cast as strictly a victim, Gisèle also unpacks decisions and traumas from her own history, including the death of her mother at a young age, a wicked stepmother, a father who also dies young, the strained yet loving relationship with her daughter, intimate details (some sweet, some not so sweet) with her husband, and a short-lived affair her husband knew about. She also shares why she ultimately decided to make the trial public and that it wasn’t an easy choice, until it was. And how through it all, she refuses to break or give up on living her best life.
I would recommend this memoir to survivors of sexual violence who want to feel less alone and more optimistic about the future, though all readers should be forewarned that there are graphic scenes in this book that could trigger unwanted memories and feelings. I would also recommend this memoir to those who want to be reminded that perseverance, and even love, are possible amid unexpected, horrendous tragedy and betrayal. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention what a phenomenal job Emma Thompson does narrating the audiobook version of this memoir.
Here are some notable passages from the book:
“I had no interest in the internet and social media, and I had no idea of the extent to which they had altered human relationships. In my little life, I always thought that a dangerous man was by definition aggressive, which Dominique wasn’t.”
“The magistrate asked me if I wanted to see some of the videos. I categorically refused. Over the past few weeks, I had been spending an absurd amount of time in the shower, obsessively washing myself, scrubbing myself clean of the filth of all those men who had raped a dead woman. That was the impression I had got from the few photographs I had seen: sleep and death conflated.”
“About forty men had already been arrested. My lawyer kept sending me the transcripts of their interrogations; they read like strange truths, scenes with me but without me. I found out that one of the men had HIV. He had come to our house several times and never used a condom. By some miracle he hadn’t infected me. I also realised that another man who had raped me used to greet me very politely at the boulangerie in Mazan; I recognised him because he once came to the house to buy some bicycle wheels.”
“The worst thing, though, was that most of the men denied the charge of rape, and several claimed that I had been moving, participating in their orgy. My lawyer warned me it wouldn’t be easy and that I would be under suspicion as well. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Dominique … started accompanying me to the doctor. He was the one who made the appointments. He wanted to reassure me. I hadn’t realised the way he controlled my emotions, the way he’d give the answer to a question that I had not even thought of asking. The way he somehow ensured that I brought up my health concerns as rarely as possible with my daughter and sons. ‘You don’t want to worry them,’ he would say. How did I persist in seeing kindness where there was nothing but manipulation?”
“Dominique never openly expressed any bitterness or rivalry, but the further back I go, the more I can see how the arcs of our lives were diverging. And I see how I was trying to redress the imbalance between us. Trying to make him feel better about himself, time and time again.”
“I was beginning to realise that a closed hearing meant I would be alone with them. Locked in with them. It was a vague sense I had, difficult to formulate in words. I hadn’t discussed it with anyone, but as the trial drew near I kept imagining myself hostage to their gaze, their lies, their cowardice and their contempt. The charges against them were overwhelming, the evidence unprecedented, but the fact remained that there would be fifty-one men gathered in the courtroom. Their voices would be louder than mine. And all their eyes would be on me as they stood shoulder to shoulder, like a wall. Maybe I was handing them a gift. Maybe I was actually protecting them by asking for the trial to be held behind closed doors. No one would ever know what they had done to me. There would be no journalists present to say their names and describe their crimes. No one beyond those involved in the trial would see their faces…”
“Some of my friends went into a panic and told me I couldn’t do this alone, that I didn’t know anyone else who could represent me. I replied that I would speak for myself, if need be. I had no backup plan. I didn’t for a moment imagine the judicial maelstrom that I was about to be sucked into. But I trusted my instincts. I could sense what was good for me and what wasn’t.”
“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.”
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© This work is not available for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC.
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