Making A Difference

No More Thank Yous

Scorned ex-First Lady’s salacious memoir has France in a tizzy

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No More Thank Yous
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The Bard could well have written the ‘hell hath no fury’ line with former French First Lady Valerie Trierweiler in mind. For her breathtakingly nasty kiss ’n tell memoir on the seven years she spent as partner of President Francois Hol­lande has become a publishing sensation here with sales outstripping even Fifty Shades of Grey. It has provided gossip and entertainment to a nation in the grip of a deep economic malaise, given fodder to the country’s chatterati and twitterati and perked up an otherwise grim, sodden summer.

A political journalist with celebrity magazine Paris Match, Ms Trierweiler was publicly repudiated by her partner last January in a tersely worded statement issued by the Elysee presidential palace that said Hollande was “putting an end to their shared life”.

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Psychoanalyst Nadine Delorme said in an interview, “Since then she’s been fum­ing, boiling over with rage. The Socialist Party and her smart friends shunned her and the journalistic fraternity dropped her like a stone once it became clear she was no longer part of the inner circle but just a has-been to be pitied, if at all. This is a bitter, ignored woman who is hitting back with all the force and strength she can muster. Her nastiness is impressive and her well of poison appears bottomless. I doubt she will ever recover. And after this moment of glory—if one can call it that—has passed, she will end up paying a very heavy price. By that I mean ostracism, social contempt, a certain social delegitimisation. Because this is a completely gratuitous attack born of some of the most negative feelings a human being can express.... In a sense she has literally burnt all her boats.”

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The book reads like a soggy, sentimental love story, a la Barbara Cartland with lots of dramatic scene-settings, including an attempted suicide by the author. It was printed in Germany in great secrecy and shipped to stores in France on the eve of its release.

Timed to go off at a crucial moment in the political calendar—the return to work after the long summer break—it hit its mark with unerring accuracy. The bombshell couldn’t have exploded at a worse time for the beleaguered Holla­nde. The government was in crisis and in the midst of a cabinet reshuffle following the ousting of three rebel ministers and the president’s popularity had fallen to 13 per cent, the lowest ever recorded for a leader of the Vth Republic. Overnight, all those issues faded into the background as Trierweiler’s book Merci pour ce moment (Thank You For This Moment) gripped the nation’s imagination.

Its language is not obscene. There are no overt sex scenes. And yet the book is deeply vulgar, outrageous, shaming the reader into realising that he/she has become privy to salacious details they’d rather not know. One has in fact been a peeping Tom, looking through the bedroom keyhole of the president of the French Republic. Trierweiler talks about her feelings of obsessional jealousy towa­rds Segolene Royal, Hollande’s elegant former partner and the mother of his four children. How the Elysee Palace mandarins chose to ignore her, made her feel small at every opportunity, how she felt sad, bewildered, lonely. Sob!

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Trierweiler has accused Hollande of being a compulsive liar, of being self-obs­essed and vain, of harbouring a con­tempt for the poor whom he calls the “toothless” hordes. It’s this last acc­u­sation that is likely to damage to the president’s reputation, the only cha­­rge to which he reacted publicly, saying he had always tried to serve the weakest and most vulnerable in society.

The book has achieved the quite imp­o­ssible feat of unifying the count­ry’s political establishment. Even Mar­ine Le Pen, leader of the extreme right National Front who loses no occasion to tear into Hollande, said: “This book brings dishonour to France and affects the person who wrote it as much as the person who it writes about. It is a competition of indecency!” Ironically, Le Pen’s father suffered a similar indignity at the hands of ex-wife Pierette Le Pen who wrote a scurrilous account of their lives together and even posed nude for Lui magazine.

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Segolene Royal dismissed the “toothless” accusation out of hand. “That is utter rubbish. How can you believe that of a man who’s been a socialist all his life, who has worked to better the lives of the people at the bottom of the social ladder!” she said in a radio interview.

In another development that could only happen in France, many independent booksellers say they will not stock it. “We are booksellers. We do not aspire to become rubbish bins for Trierweiler and Hollande,” one of them was quoted as saying. Another said: “It isn’t the bookseller’s job to wash Tri­erw­eiler’s dirty linen.” But FNAC, a major book-sell­ing chain, said it had sold some 80,000 copies within the space of two days. “The shelves are emptying fas­ter than we can fill them. In my opinion, the book could sell over half a million copies. She will make a couple of million euros at least,” said Marc, an assistant at FNAC. Copies are leaving shops at an astounding rate yet hardly anyone admits to having read it. “I read the few extracts put out by the press. I don’t want to read anymore, thank you,” sniffed Jan­ine Krause, a staunch socialist who isn’t particularly fond of Hollande. “I don’t think he’s been very efficient as a president but these below-the-belt attacks are intolerable.”

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Public service television announced  piously that the book was so dreadful, so abject and voyeuristic, its channels wouldn’t cover the story. “Whoever said public service broadcasting in France was truly independent? I’m glad they’ve decided to shun the book, mind you, but I would be sad if they’re doing it on orders from the Elysee. However, this is a mere storm in a teacup. It’ll all die down very soon. What a poor pathetic creature this woman is. What will she do now? Carry on being a reporter for Paris Match? They’ll throw her out pretty soon. Just you wait and see. They too belong to the political establishment, after all,” predicts Janine Krause.

Valerie Trierweiler has taken potshots not just at Hollande, she also lashes out at journalists, bureaucrats, politicians and former friends. None of these people are likely to forget or forgive. The only person she appears to like and to absolve of all blame is herself.

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Excerpts

Here Valerie Trier­w­e­iler talks about how she learnt of Hol­l­ande’s affair with act­ress Julie Gayet, the one which brought about their split: “The news about Julie Gayet is on the front pages...I crack. I can’t listen to it. I rush into the bathroom. I take the little plastic bag with sleeping pills.... Francois has follo­wed me. He tries to snatch the bag. I run into the room. He catches the bag and it splits. The pills scatter across the bed and the floor. I recover some of them. I swa­llow what I can. I want to sleep, I don’t want to live the coming hours. I feel the storm that will come over me and I don’t have the force to resist it. I want to flee. I lose consciousness.”

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The jealousy between Segolene Royal, the first partner of the president, and Trier­weiler is well known. Here she writes about a restaurant dinner that went badly: “Francois and I are talking, we are laughing. Suddenly I see Segolene Royal entering the restaurant, walking towards us. Francois’s back is turned, he does not see her. I warn him and he thinks it is a joke until she sits down at our table. She is cold and tells us she hopes she does not disturb us. Francois seems completely unable to speak so I answer, “We were talking about the Tour de France.” Segolene barks, “Stop bullshitting me!”

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(The author is a journalist and author.)

By Vaiju Naravane in Paris

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