Maria Ndiaye‘s 2023 novel Vengeance is Mine was recommended by a few best-of lists at the end of 2024, so I hopped on.
This is a pretty short review as, sad to say, it just never came together for me. The novel–translated from French, which always raises a question of fidelity–focuses on a female protagonist who is struggling to make sense of a traumatic episode from her childhood, an event pulled into the present when she is chosen as the legal representative in a horrific case involving (perhaps–she is never quite sure) the same family of that fateful afternoon of her youth.
And … that’s it, really.
There are some engaging long monologues that I think would work really well as fodder for an acting class, and I was very engaged with the protagonist, especially early on in the novel. But it never really came together for me. Can’t love everything you read.