524. Jealousy

Jealousy
Alain Robbe-Grillet
1957
Around 105 pages

We've seen jealous husbands on this List roughly 500 times, so I thought a story that entirely centered on an angry husband watching his wife through the blinds would be rather boring. But Robbe-Grillet puts his own spin on the formula, and he doesn't overstay his welcome.

Hardly anything happens here. Our unnamed narrator watches his wife (who is only referred to as A.) interact with their neighbor Franck, and reads into every little movement the two make. As we clearly have an unreliable narrator on our hands, it's hard to tell what's suspicious and what's ordinary.

I think we all have the voice in our head that tells us our partner may be cheating on us, and this novella is an exploration of what would happen if we completely uncorked those emotions and let our paranoia run rampant.

Of course, like any stake out, it gets a little tedious by the end. But it was a cool experiment nonetheless.

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

The French title: "la jalousie" is a play on words that can be translated as "jealousy", but also as "the jalousie window."

UP NEXT: The Once and Future King by T.H. White