The Margot Affair: A Novel

Anouk couldn’t have come from a more different family. Raised in the affluent town of Le Vésinet, in the suburbs of Paris, she went to boarding school and spent her summers in Saint-Tropez, driving on a motorcycle with her friends, sometimes wearing nothing but shoes. When they retired, her parents moved to a beautiful house in Burgundy.

I lived in a strange space, caught between the guilt of being his weakness and the desire to be everything.

The day was winding down by the time I arrived at Parc de Belleville. It was the second highest point of elevation in Paris after Sacré-Coeur, overlooking the city with a view of the monuments. Belleville had been the last standing barricade of the Commune de Paris, home to Edith Piaf and Georges Perec.

We are like snakes, she said. Throughout our lives we shed our previous selves like old skins. We’re always changing, never the same individual. Nothing, not even a terrible thing, can fully consume us.

Were we shaped by the spaces in which we existed? At home, our apartment was all boundaries: each wall encasing us without the risk of being seen, a private space when Father was there. The boundaries had been there my entire life, and I’d always respected them. Outside it was more complicated. In the past three years we’d stopped going to restaura

and you can’t understand what it was like. A marriage is a closed world. Anyone who thinks they can explain it to an outsider is a fool.

She spent her childhood in Le Vésinet, a wealthy town west of Paris, the opposite of where Father was raised. Her parents had a studio nearby in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and as soon as she was old enough to leave, she moved into the studio.

Who would I be today if I was raised by married parents, if our little family wasn’t weighed down by a secret? I envied Madame Lapierre and her sons, and their clean conscience. And yet, was it terrible to admit that I’d also loved the travails of our life, the inconsistency of Father’s affection, the hardness of Anouk’s hands when they pulled on m

On the surface, my parents seemed like opposites. She belonged, no matter the city or country she found herself in. Knowing how to properly put on makeup mattered more to her than learning how to drive. She didn’t care how others perceived her, nor did she try to please everyone around her. He was less secure, and when he felt threatened, he shut d