Gisèle Pelicot’s Memoir Recasts Shame After Her Husband’s Crimes

In A Hymn to Life, Gisèle Pelicot, with Judith Perrignon and translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver, describes how a decades-long marriage unraveled after her husband was first caught taking upskirt photos in a supermarket. Written with matter-of-fact precision, the memoir alternates between the ordinary details of domestic life and the shock of the very public revelations that followed.

Investigators found that Dominique Pelicot and others had documented and repeatedly raped her over the course of a decade, often drugging her — including with lorazepam, once slipped into mashed potatoes. He was convicted of raping his wife and another woman, has admitted an attempted rape using ether in 1999, and is being questioned in a 1991 murder involving the same chemical, which he has denied.

The book reads as a rousing feminist manifesto as much as a personal account: Pelicot and a phalanx of supporters attended the trial at the Palais de Justice, and she presses for a transfer of shame from victims to their perpetrators and enablers.

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