[ Consiglio per un libro di Muriel Fischer ] Gaëlle Obiégly takes you into the mindset of a jealous person and thereby entangles you in jealousy’s inextricable bonds. Her writing is dense and a bit muddled, like the feelings you have when you love somebody but can’t stop yourself from doubting that person’s love. Obiégly’s writing is by turns blunt and pragmatic, cerebral and analytical; but it is always poetic – making her book into an essay, a prose poem, a collection of short stories, all in one. She philosophises and jokes, and immerses you in a modern, very personal style, confronting you with a single voice that finds itself multiplied in echoes. The narrator speaks in the first person and the characters have no names, being defined purely by the situations they experience. At any given moment, you could easily be one of them. What makes them intriguing is how difficult they find it to live in the moment, to live without a feeling of imminent rupture and lovers’ lies. Each chapter offers a new scenario, revealing the inner workings of a jealous person. You walk in the person’s footsteps, see things through his or her eyes, and experience the boredom and fear of living with or like him or her. The narration is very free: at times you grope along in a dream, film, or other situation that blends into the character’s story. This book presents a gallery of inner portraits without any distinct features, except for obvious distress, prompting you to reflect not on jealousy, but love - and not just any kind of love, but self-love.

[ Citazione ] It’s life that hinders us from living. Often I have to think of death’s imminence, its inescapability, so I can live with joy. In the same way, I believe it is love that keeps us from loving. Jealousy gives us a glimpse of loss, of falling out of love; jealousy makes us both hate the object of our affections, and love it too.

[ Informazioni sul libro ] Obiégly, Gaëlle: Petit éloge de la jalousie. (original language: Français) Gallimard, Paris, 2007 . ISBN: 9782070345465.