REVIEW: This Little Family by Ines Bayard

 

This Little Family by Ines Bayard (translated by Adriana Hunter)
Genre: Domestic thriller, Noir
Read: 23rd August 2020
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Published: 28th April 2020

★★★ 3 stars

DESCRIPTION:

Life is going well for Marie. She and her husband, Laurent, live a comfortable life in a large apartment in the eleventh arrondissement in Paris. Laurent has a good job at a big law firm and Marie enjoys her work at a bank, where she feels appreciated by her clients and colleagues.

Comfortable and secure, and ready for family life, the couple begin to try for a baby. But not long afterwards Marie experiences a shocking encounter which threatens to derail their plans completely, and her world slowly starts to fall apart.

Less than two years later, the family’s apartment is cordoned off by police tape as forensic officers examine a horrific scene in the family apartment. Three bodies around a dining table. Marie, Laurent and their little toddler, Thomas, in his high chair. All three of them have been poisoned by Marie.

This Little Family is a dark and furiously compelling novel about women, power and control, from a bright young star in French literature.

MY REVIEW:

The stewed apples are still sitting on the table but this little family is no longer there to eat them. Death has claimed them all.

A dark, disturbing and somewhat harrowing story, THIS LITTLE FAMILY by Ines Bayard opens with the disturbing scene depicting a family of three - Marie, Laurent and baby Thomas - all dead at the table depicted in horrific detail, having been poisoned by Marie herself. But why? What would lead a mother to take not only her life but that of her husband and baby son? What demons drove her to the edge until she could see no way other way out? 

What unfolds is the story is Marie's story, beginning prior to the birth of Thomas who was a toddler at the time of his death. A career woman working as a financial advisor in a bank while her husband Laurent was a successful lawyer, Marie has come to the decision that it is time for her and Laurent to try for a baby and therefore stops taking the pill almost immediately. This is welcome news for her husband who would love nothing more than to share the joys of parenthood with his wife. 

However, almost as soon as this decision is made, the power is then brutally taken from Marie when she accepts a ride home from her CEO boss. Driving her to within a walking distance from her front door he parks in a dark car park, locks the doors and brutally and mercilessly rapes her in every way possible. The narrative of the event is that descriptive that the reader can feel Marie's pain as well as her shame. Before driving off, he threatens her with losing her job and her husband if she mentions what took place.

Marie's life from then on spirals downward. She loses interest in anything and everything. She doesn't take part in conversations or makes any effort to connect with Laurent, who is oblivious to his wife's pain. Her emotions unravel as she goes through the motions of a life she now feels disconnected from until she stops altogether. The nausea she has felt since the attack has not subsided but if anything has gotten worse as she sees everything as related to her rape. But Laurent, who is blind to her pain, has the nous to suspect what he believes to be plainly obvious. That she is pregnant. He presents her with a testing kit and to her horror, it shows positive. Marie is that absorbed in her own pain that she sees no other outcome than this child is the spawn of that evil attack. But how can she tell Laurent that now when she never told him of the attack in the first place?

What transpires is Marie's continual downward spiral as she convinces herself that the baby growing inside her is the result of her rape and is not Laurent's child. Meanwhile everyone is thrilled for Marie, throwing her parties and celebrating the happy news...which she thinks is anything but. She tries to think up ways to get rid of the child. She even throws herself down the stairs, but the baby survives, although she is left with a broken leg. When the baby is born, she cannot even look at him. The sight of his nakedness horrifies her. She feels so alienated from everyone as they come to first see the baby, and then her. She was just an incubator for a child that she loathes.

Most women at the birth of their child, would bond with them as soon as they look at them. But Marie didn't. She hated Thomas. She hated the sight of him, the smell of him, the look of him and all he reminded her of. She found she couldn't escape him as Laurent went back to work and she was stuck at home with him. He would scream and she would ignore him until she she decided to see to him. She would not let another man - albeit a baby - dictate her life to her. And so she left him unchanged and unbathed so she would have as little to do with him as possible. She did not talk to him, she did not sing to him, she did not play with him. She pretty much ignored his existence for most of the day. Until attention was drawn to the fact that she had been neglecting him when he ended up in hospital with an infection. After that, Marie did only as much as was needed to keep Thomas clean and fed so as to not raise the issue of neglect again. But she found it difficult not to put her hands around his throat and squeeze...or to let him fall from their fourth floor balcony.

Marie's journey into a downward spiral of depression that is both harrowing and heartbreaking to read, is only compounded by the existence of her baby son whom she is convinced is the child of her rapist. From the moment he was born she vowed to make him pay...despite the fact he is an innocent baby. She didn't see him that way. He was the reminder of something so horrific and so brutal that she decided there was no way she could ever love something borne from such an abhorrent act. Her self absorption and self loathing was merely a mirror as to how she felt about herself since that night. How could Laurent love her now? How could anyone love her? Look at her...fat and stretched out of shape thanks to the spawn of evil that came out of her. Her self destruction only gets worse when she discovers that Laurent may have discovered her secret. And it is then that she makes that final decision...

THIS LITTLE FAMILY is an extremely difficult and harrowing read. It explores abuse and the trauma it leaves behind, as well as the emotions of self loathing and ultimately the self destruction of oneself as Marie drives herself to madness. This will not be a story for everyone, and while I thought it was a clever debut, I was also shocked by some of Marie's actions which I really didn't understand. And the sometimes vulgar narrative I found a little unnecessary and uncomfortable. I didn't understand why it was there, given Marie's experience it just didn't make sense to me. And I abhor vulgar expressions used so flippantly as it was here occasionally. To me, there is no need for such expressions.

THIS LITTLE FAMILY is a dark and disturbing read with hardly any dialogue (not one of my favourite styles) being as it is more narrative driven. The narrative is extremely powerful whilst also incredibly brutal and shocking. As the author is French, this book has been translated into English and I have to wonder if some things were lost to translation.

A haunting story that will definitely not leave you in a hurry, THIS LITTLE FAMILY is a fast read (if you can put yourself through the harrowing tale for long enough) and I read it in one sitting. 

I applaud the author for the coup-de-grace in the final chapter. That final lines sent chills through me for the words that Laurent will never hear. A good ending.

Again, I must reiterate that this book WILL NOT be for everyone. It is incredibly descriptive, dark, disturbing and extremely harrowing.

I would like to thank #InesBayard, #NetGalley and #4thEstate for an ARC of #ThisLittleFamily in exchange for an honest review.

MEET THE AUTHOR:

Inès Bayard was born in Toulouse, France, in 1991. She lived and studied in Paris for several years before relocating in 2017 to Berlin, where she is currently based. This Little Family is her first novel. 

Adriana Hunter (translator) studied French and Drama at the University of London.