Book review: ‘All I wanted was a quiet life’

'A Hymn to Life' zigzags between two narratives: from Gisele Pelicot's difficult childhood to meeting Dominique Pelicot and their 50 years of marriage and her discovery of his crimes

Gisele Pelicot insists her 50 years of marriage were not a lie: that its ups and downs were real. File picture: Associated Press/ Alamy Stock Photo/ PA 

• A Hymn to Life 
• Gisèle Pelicot 
• Natasha Lehrer (Translator), Ruth Diver (Translator)
• Penguin, €18.99

A Hymn to Life turns an awful crime into an inspirational story — and forces us to confront what made it possible

In October 2020 Gisèle Pelicot’s husband of 50 years, Dominique, broke down in tears and confessed he had been caught taking photos up women’s skirts in a supermarket. 

The police confiscated his phone and laptop. A few weeks later, when she accompanied him to the police station, they took her into a separate room and showed her some of the images in her husband’s possession.

The police officer, Deputy Sergeant Laurent Perret, had spent days and nights “wondering what words to use” with Gisèle. 

In a sense none were necessary: the photos showed her unconscious, naked, and in the process of being raped by her husband and other men. 

Her husband had been drugging her. If he had not been arrested, the drugs may eventually have killed her.

A Hymn to Life (translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver from the French, Et la joie de vivre), written in collaboration with the journalist Judith Perrignon, begins by recounting the story of that conversation with the police, which changed her life forever.

But no life is reducible to a single moment, however dramatic. 

The book tells a much larger story, zigzagging between two narratives.

The first recounts Gisèle Pelicot’s life from her difficult childhood to meeting Dominique Pelicot and their 50 years of marriage. 

The second narrates her discovery of his crimes, above all the rapes committed against herself, and the process leading to a trial with 51 defendants.

“I am not a radical person; all I’ve ever wanted is a conventional, quiet life.” 

For a long time that was what she believed she had. Few of us can imagine how it must feel for all of that to collapse virtually in a single moment.

Gisèle insists her 50 years of marriage were not a lie: that its ups and downs were real. 

Especially since what made her vulnerable was also, she believes, her ultimate source of strength: “I still need to believe in love.”

One of the book’s more poignant narrative strands tells of the breakdown in the relationship between Gisèle and two of her children: her daughter Caroline and her son David (Caroline Darian published two books on the affair, in 2022 and 2025). 

The details of the dispute with Caroline in particular are recounted in those books as well as this one.

Their relationship seems like one more thing tragically destroyed by Dominique Pelicot’s actions. 

It is understandable, when people learn something so terrible and hard to understand, that they react differently, and even offend each other.

In the course of processing what happened Gisèle moves several times, rekindles an old friendship with a colleague who had warned her against her husband, and finds romance.

A turning point in the book is her decision to have the case tried in public instead of anonymously: in French law, this is solely the victim’s prerogative.

Gradually, in the face of an overwhelming public response, she comes to accept her role as part of a broader social conversation.

All the accused in the case were from the area around the village of Mazan, on the Côte d’Azur, to which the Pelicots had moved after retirement.

If Dominique Pelicot’s crimes are shocking for their exceptional brutality, what is disturbing about these men is the opposite. They are ordinary.

Gisèle writes: “There were old men, bald men, men with paunches, men who were young and athletic; one was constantly chewing gum; another had brought along some policeman friends for support.

“But they did share one thing: a sense of entitlement. An attitude of complete indifference to whatever anyone said or thought, because power had always been on their side.”